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THE
MASTERPIECES
OF THE
Centennial International
EXHIBITION
VOLUME I
A li J W-J*:irr -
'/"//•/??? /y^i.''
b'lRfOM TJIM MmV HIMJUEWT. ]MTlE]BK^IOITAI. EXMlIJBITJl'IDFaSfe.
LLUSTRATED CATALOGUE
MSTEK PIECES m THE
(&IEBBIIE & MAMF.IiE, FUEiJLISMEIRS, IPHIILAIDEILIPEhIIA,
THE
MASTERPIECES
OF THE
Centennial International Exhibition
ILLUSTRATED
VOLUME I
FINE ART
BY
Edward Strahan
; NMAA/NPG LIBRARY | *
i AUG 2 1 1990
i
' SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTiON
' .PHILADELPHIA
GEBBIE & BARRIE
The Table of Contents.
VOLUME I.
PAGE.
On the Fine Art of the Exhibition ' i
The Castellan! Collection of Antiques 320
The Masterpieces of Photography 332
The Fine Art Literature 342
ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL.
PAINTINGS.
Subject. Painter.
Christ Walking on the Water, (Literature) . . Bit^a, A. ...
Western Kansas Bierstadt, Albert
Oxen Ploughing, (Literature) Bonheur, Rosa .
First Step, (Literature) Bonnat, L. J^. F.
Breezy Day off Dieppe Briscoe, F. . . .
Genoa Brown, G. L. .
After the Battle Calderon, P. H.
Roger and Angelica Chart ran, T. . .
Old Mill, The Cropsey, J. F.
Heath Field in Holland Elten, K. van
Engr-wer.
Pl.\te.
Text.
PAGE.
PAGE.
. L. Flame ng . . .
344 •
3S<5
. R. Hinshel-wood .
39 •
39
. P. Moran ....
Z2>^ ■
366
. A. Masson . . .
346 .
354
. R. Hinsheluwod .
no .
no
. H. S. Beckwith .
204 .
212
.FA. Heath . .
iSS .
iSS
. M. Goiipil . . .
14 .
366
. R. Hinshelwood .
232 .
250
. R. Hinsheliuood .
260 .
252
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Subject.
Painter.
de
Cat Feigning Death Getnpt, B. te . .
San Giorgio, Venice Gifford, S. R. .
Landscape and Cattle Hart, yames M.
Brig Hove-to for a Pilot Haas, M. F. H.
End of the Game Irving, y. B. .
Covenanter's Marriage yohnston, Akxatia
"1876" Lewis, Edmund D
Ecce Homo Morales, Luis
Fog on the Grand Banks Norton, W. E.
Bather Pei-rault, A. .
Touchstone and Audrey Pettic, yohn .
Memorial Hall, (Design) Piton, Camile
Feeding the Sacred Ibis Poynter, E. y.
Reynold's Portrait Reynolds, Sir y
The Last Hope Ronncr, Hairictte
Elaine Rosenthal, Toby
Trial of Sir Harry Vane Rothermel, P. T.
Amulet Seller Se?niradsky, H.
Angelo and Isabella, (Literature) .... Spiers, A. . .
The Scheldt Stanjield, C. .
Chesterfield's Ante-Room IFar,/, E. M.
Rabbit Hunters Wilkie, Sir David
der
Engraver.
P. Moran . . .
R. Hitishelwood
R. Hinshelwood
R. Hinshelwood
S. y. Ferris
F. Lightfoot .
R. Hinshelwood
M. Maillefer
R. Hinshelwood
S. y. Ferris
C. Cousen . .
McGoffin, y.
F. youbert
T. W.Hunt
P. Moran . .
R. Hinshelwood
R. Dudensing
S. y. Ferris
W. Schmidt .
R. IVallis . .
C. IF. Sharpe
y. C. A r my t age
Plate.
PAGE.
5°
250
46
288
180
30
218
212
292
140
Title
100
256
240
2go
148
302
356
308
176
Text.
PAGE.
252
44
288
1 88
39
218
212
292
140
38
lOI
252
250
290
149
302
344
366
189
123
SCULPTURE.
Subject.
Sculptor.
Engraver.
Plate. Text.
PAGE. PACK.
Finding of Moses . . ' Barzaghi, F. . .
America Bell, yohn . .
Ophelia Connelley, P. F.
American Soldier Conrads, C. . .
Venus Gibson, yohn
West Wind Gould, T. R. . .
Reading Girl Magni, Pietro
Columbia Mueller, A. M. y.
Premiere Pose Roberts, H.
Nydia Rogers, R. . . .
Electricity Rosetti, Antonio
Steam Rosetti, Antonio
Medea Siorey, JV. IV.
G. y Stodart 114
IV. Roffe ....... 78
5. y. Ferris 296
y.Serz 62
]]'. Roffe 112
y. S:rz 30°
W. Roffe 172
y. Serz Frontispiece
R. Dudensing 126
y. Serz 298
y. H. Baker 108
y. H. Baker 166
y. Serz 214
114
79
296
62
108
296
172
38
125
298
108
166
214
TO THE FINE ART OF THE EXHIBITION, 1876.
ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.
PAINTINGS.
Subject. Painter. Plate.
PAGE.
Lake of Piedilugo Ashfon, F. 237
Woods in Autumn Ashton, F. 259
Beacon, The Absalon, y. 187
Noon in the Country Bartesago, Enrico 197
Rizpah Beckei; George 33
Edge of the Forest Bellee, L. G. dc 129
Sunday in Devonshire Bellows, F. 44
Gale on the Nile Berchere, N
Wheelwrights' Shop
151
Billings, F. T. 93
Grandmother's Tales Bliime, Edmund 165
Anniversary, The Bompiani, R 167
Pompeiian Boy Flute-Player Bompia7ii, R 171
Rome, from the Tiber Bossuet, F. A 125
Puritans Going to Church Boughfon, G. H. 194-195
The Last Struggle Brackett, W. M. 12
Canal at Courrieres Breton, Emile 76
Village at Artois Breton, Emile 219
Bringing in the Corn • Bridgman, F. E 82
Curling in Central Park Brown, 'jF. G 13
Francesca di Rimini Cabanel, A 113
Cassandra Camo7-re, L 179
Call on Uncle, the Cardinal Castiglione, G 1 74-i 75
Warrant (The), Haddon Hall Castiglione, G 98
Your Good Health Champney, y^AV. S
Fisherman's Wife of Zuyder-Zee Cogen, F. 295
King's Entertainment Comte, P. C. 118-119
Lock, The Constable, jfohn 37
Dream of Carrick Shore Daniell, W. 287
Oyster Shipping at Cancale . Daubigny, K. 267
I and my Pipe Dielitz, K. 41
Croizette, M'lle Durati, Carohis 87
Visit to the Village Artist Eggert, S. 153
Duet in the Smithy Ewers, H. 65
Pan and Bacchantes Felix, E 270-271
Melancholy Feyen-Perrin, F. N. A 57
Fisherman's Wife and Child Feyen-Perrin, F. N. A 301
Text.
PAGE.
264
266
224
66
134
74
179
45
207
176
176
178
219
47
80 ■
233
96
46
148
198
180
120
51
312
196
So
310
274
92
100
20S
no
269 -
120
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
' Subject. - ' Painter. _ Plate.
PAGE.
Casual Ward, The Fildes, S. L 188-1S9
Lady Jane Gray Folingsby, G. F. 106-T07
Evocation of Souls Fontana, R 121
Park, The Founnois, A 133
Mill, The Founnois, T. 289
Beware ! Forbes. J". C. 61
Cairo Fruit Girl Goodall, F. 146-147
Monastery Garden Gidllon, A 279
Luther Litercepted Harj-acli, Count Von 103
Disputed Toll Hardy, H. 254-255
Keene Valley, Adirondacks Hart, William 36
In the Park Hiddemann, F. 250
Returning the Salute Hodgson, 'jF- E • . 309
Lord (The), Gave, iScc Holl. F. 77
Checkmate Horslcy,. 'y. C. 90
Sowing the Word Huntington, D 25
Lake George Kciisctt, J- F. 52
Unwelcome Guest, The Lance, G 210-21 1
Fellah Woman LandeUc, C. 163
Harvest Scene Laporte, E 303
La Rota LeJimann, R 73
May-Day in the Time of Queen Elizabeth . . . Leslie, C. R 95
King Morvan Luminals, E. V. 190-191
Out in the Cold A/aclVJiirter, y. 305
Sentinel, The Afaignan, Albert 275
Venice Doing Homage to Catherine Cornaro . . Makart, H. 4
Ornithologist, The Marks, H. S 307
"1776" Maynard, G. W. 29
During tlie Sermon Michis, P in
In the Bay of Naples Millet, F. D 28
New York Harbor ^ Morari, E 21
Return of the Herd Moraii, P. 9
Madeleine Flower-Market Morin, E 234-235
Mountain Gloom, Glencoe Neivtoir, A. P. 138-139
Wedding in a Country Church Nordenberg, B 246-247
Moonlight on the Lagoons, ^'enice Orchardson, JF. Q 60
Prince Henry, Poins and Falstaff Orchardson, IF. Q 205
Bride in Alsace, A Pabsf, C. A 222-223
Charles I. leaving Westminster Hall Pott, L. jF. 2S5
Young Bull. The Potter, Paul, (Copy) 137
Apelles Poynter, E. y. 227
Festival, The Poynter, E. y. 229
Golden Age, The Poynter, E. y. 231
TO THE FINE ART OF THE EXHIBITION, 1S76.
Subject.
Painter.
Death of Cleopatra Prinsep, V. C.
Landing of Columbus Puebla, D. . .
First Proof, The Reichcrt, F. .
Reverie Romagiwle, A.
Reproof, The ■ Sartain, E. .
Christian Martyr under Diocletian Slingcncyer, E.
View of Paintings Spanish Coiu-t .
Imogen Starr, Louisa .
Mistress Dorothy Storey, G. A.
Only a Rabbit Storey, G. A. .
Convalescent, The Tadema, L. A.
Vintage Festival Tadema, L. A.
Insanity of Queen Juana Valles, L. . .
Plate.
PAGE,
202—203
. . 241
■ • 132
■ • 56
. . 20
■ • 125
. . 241
262-263
. . 68
1S2-1S3
. . 69
• • 17
. . 241
Sea-Shore at Blankenberghe Verhas, y. 283
Christ Blessing Little Children West, Benjamin 213
Death of General Wolfe West, Benjavmi 53
Venetian Water-Carriers ■ . . Wulffacrt, H. 49
Old Russian Couple Zagorsky, N. 297
Text.
PAGE.
224.-
137
127-
193
209
242 •
268
71
1S6
74
31'
245-
286
232
67
54-
3°4
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FINE ART.
ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD.
SCULPTURE.
Subject.
Sculptor.
Plate.
Aurora Bailly, y. A.
Fleeting Time
Spinning-Girl of Megara
Young Vine-Grower
Barcaglia, Donato i6i
Barrias, L. E 291
Bartholdi, A 343
First Friend, The Barzaghi, F.
185
Vanity Barzaghi, F. 145
Mother's Treasure Borghi, A 281
Rienzi . Borghi, A 299
Cleopatra Braga, Enrico 143
Mountebank, The Braga, Enrico 293
Young Grape-Gatherer Branca, Giulio 105
Erring Wife, The Cambos, Jiiles 169
Africaine Caroni, E 40
Telegram of Love Caroni, E 32
Shinty Player, The Chilian Court 128
Lucifer Corti, Signor 80
Youthful Hannibal B'Epinay, P 89
Young Mother Fraikin, C. A 249
Venus Gil'son, yohn 64
Drunken Moujik . Gotfel'ski, C. 217
Apotheosis of Washington Guamcrio, P 156
Aronte Gtcamerio, P. 265
Forced Prayer, The Giiarnerio, P. 48
Last Days of Pompeii Guamcrio, P 305
Vanity Guamcrio, P 136
I-ittle Samaritan Hartley, y. S. 24
Columbus Italian Court 177
Louis XL at Peronne Martin. Felix 273
Secret from on High Moulin, H. 97
Cinderella Ncrin, B 16
Eagle and Turkey Pandiani, y. 116
Berenice Peduzsi, R 257
Michael Angelo Pozzi, Egidio 81
The Beggars Rizzardo, G 207
13
Text.
PAGE.
55
176
310
306
198
172
282
314
144
311
US
200
59
59
200
104
1-152
284
108
230
160
278
62
300
144
62
204
281
117
55
134
276
94
228
castellan/ collect/on and masterpieces of photograpjly. xi
Subject. Sculptor. Plate. Text.
PAGE. PAGE.
Ruth Rogers, R 56 . . 127
Bather, The Tantardini, A 72 . . 93
Reader, The Tantardini, A 215 . . 229
Bird's-Nest, The Trombetta, Signer 199 . . 258
First Step, The Trombetta, Signqr 225 . . 231
Affection and Envy Zannoni, U. 239 . . 264
ENGRAVINGS OF THE CASTELLANI COLLECTION.
i^ IG. PAGI
1. Gold Ear-ring, Greek Design 32
2. Dolphin Venus Ear-ring ' 32
3. Helix-Shaped Ornament 32
4. Necklace, B. C. 700 32
5. Colossal Statue of Bacchus 31^
6. Roman Bondsman's Badge of Slavery 322
7. Actor with Comic Mask, in Terra-Cotta 323
8. Toilet Articles of a Lady of Ancient Rome 324
9. Head of Bacchus — Greek , 319
10. Bust of Euripides 317
11. Bronze Mirror 325
12. Mirror-Case 325
13. Bronze Clasp 326
14. Boy Extracting a Thorn 315
15. Bronze Bull, found at Chiusi 327
16. Bronze Toilet Box, Duck-Shape 328
17. Comb, about twenty-one hundred years old 329
ENGRAVINGS OF THE MASTERPIECES OF PHOTOGRAPHY.
Subject. Painter.
PAGE.
Winter in Holland Kaemmerer, M. 333
Market at Cracow, Portion of Lipinski, H. 335
Romeo and Juliet Makart, H. 331
FINE ART LITERATURE.
ENGRAVINGS FROM FINE ART LITERATURE.
Subject.
From.
Attack, The Musee des Deux Mondes . . .
Campo Santo in Pisa, The Italy
Entombment, The Histoire des Peintres
Fontaine de I'Avenue I'Observatoire Les Promenades de Paris . . .
Garden Party in the Fifteentli Century .... Les jfardiiis, Histoire 357
Churcli Interior Histoire des Peintres
Mirror Lalce , Le Tour du Monde 338
Pointers, The Histoire des Peintres
Progress Through Barcelona Christophe Colomb 353
Riviere de Charenton Les Promenades de Paris . . .
Scene in Batavia Voyage autour du Monde . . .
Terni Cascade, The Jtaiy
Trieste Italy
Venus and Mercury Thorwaldsen sa Vie ct son CEuvre
Wheat Field, The Histoire des Peintres
Plate.
Text.
I'AGE.
PAGE.
355 •
354
341 •
346
363 •
360
345 ■
348
357 •
360
361 .
360
338 .
346
365 •
360
353 ■
352
347 •
349
351 •
352
339 •
346
343 •
348
349 •
350
359 •
360
ELECTROTYPED BY MACKELLAR, SMITHS * JORDAN, PHILADELPHIA.
mUOXD EY CRA^T, FAIRES A nOX>CEZCS, PBILADEUniA.
Fine Art
OF THE
International Exhibition
EDWARD STRAHAN.
Vol. 1.
Entered, acrordinz to Act of Cottgress, in the year 187s. *>" GEBBIE &• BARRIE,
i« the Office of the Librarian of Congyess, at ffashington.
The International Exhibition, 1876.
)HE people of the nineteenth century find themselves inheritors
of the great classical revival of the beginning of that century.
An American, West ; a Frenchman, David ; and a German,
Mengs, led the aesthetic taste of the civilized world in 1800.
Every art-school, as has been well observed, starts from a
pagan revival or renaissance. There is, as it were, a fund of
the vital principle in Greek sculpture and Roman mural painting and Attic
vase-painting which immediately goes to work and fortifies a fresh school of
plastic, just so soon as any accident brings the work of the ancients promi-
nently before people's attention. At different times the resuscitation of Greek
specimens creates the career of Nicolo in Pisa, of Leonardo in Milan, of
Michael Angelo in the Medici gardens, of Raphael when he enfranchises him-
self from Perugia, of Poussin on leaving France, of Albert Diirer on reaching
Venice, of Velasquez in Spain, of Rubens in Antwerp, as well as of our triad
of painters, Mengs, West and David. David, then, in France, and West, in
England, were restoring classical art with all their force at the beginning of
this country's career.
But what is art? A convenient definition, one which Taine the critic is
fond of using, we owe to one who never meddled with paints or marble, who
was not, correctly speaking, either a painter or a sculptor, yet who helped on
the cause of art in his day with an energy of practice and a blaze of enthu-
siasm which has rarely been equaled before or since. This was Benvenuto
Cellini, the immortal jeweler of the sixteenth century; and he says in effect that
FINE ART.
the aim of art is "to produce a representation of a beautiful human figure,
with correctness of design and in a graceful attitude." If we can approve this
definition, and keep it in mind, it will greatly simplify our estimate of the men
and works we shall have to examine during our excursion in the paths of
modern art. It is a definition that would have been approved, without much
modification, by both the able artists who started our century for us. David
found the French captivated by the shepherdess-pictures of Boucher and Fra-
gonard. He found them insisting that art was clouds, art was gauze, art was
roses, art was hearts and darts, art was Cupids and nymphs disporting in the
sky, art was idiots in white satin who pretended they were herdsmen, art was
amorous ladies and sexless creatures in silken breeches vacantly giggling in
flowery gardens, art was the beauties of the Pare aiix Cerfs, the ephemeral
etchings of Madame de Pompadour, the sweet, liquid Elysium of Watteau.
David met this warm, steamy, enervated tide of feeling, and said coldly, "^r/
is the 7'epresentation of beautiful human figures, with correctness of design and
in noble attitudes ;" and by uttering this theory with perseverance and distinct-
ness he completely stifled a whole national school of painting and sculpture, set
in motion an influence that is perfectly distinct in his country to this day, and
spliced again a cord that was being frittered and fretted away by the French
of his time — the cord, I would say, that united the art of France with the great
classical line of art ; for the fine arts, if we take this direction of them and
consider it the central direction, stretch back in one unbroken thread through
Italy and antiquity. There is not the slightest break — from David to his master,
Vien, who expressed some recognition of classical correctness at a time when
the shepherdesses were all in favor, and antique art was a bore, who spent
much of his time in Rome, and who was beggared by the Revolution — from
Vien to Poussin, who tried his best to make an Italian of himself, and was glad
to clean the brushes of Domenichino — from him to the grand masters, Raphael,
Leonardo, Angelo, who indeed married Clerical Art (the art of the churches)
with their left hands, but gave their right hands and their whole hearts to the
pagan renaissance of their day, and whose schoolmasters were the Greek statues
which the spade then turned out hour by hour in the teeming soil of Italy —
from Italy to Italy's political captive and intellectual conqueror, Greece, and
from Greece to her mysterious old oracle, Egypt. There is not the slightest
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
logical hiatus from Egypt four thousand years ago to David in 1800, and from
David to Ingres and Gerome, if we take this clear definition of classical art,
that it is " the representation of beautiful human figures with correctness of design
and in noble atti-
tudes T
If we take any
other definition we
shall find the thread
very short. If we
say it is Christian
asceticism, we shall
indeed see it most
profoundly express-
ed by Diirer and
Fra Angelico, but it
is doomed to come
to a sudden end
when the hot vital
flame of the pagan
renaissance touches
the thread. If we
call it mere compo-
sition and light-and-
shade — pictnresqtie-
iicss, in fact — it
shows what won-
ders it can do un-
der Rembrandt, but
is unable to assert
itself in any longf
Aurora : J. A. Bailly, Sc.
coherence or his-
tory; if we call it
landscape sentiment,
we find it goes back
but a little way,
and under Hobbema
and Ruisdall soon
drowns itself in a
Dutch canal ; if we
call it still-life, it
reaches its highest
development among
the Dutch flower-
painters, and buries
itself, as Edmond
About says, in a Rot-
terdam tulip. These
specialties make
very large claims
now-a-days, and
have influential
schools — flower-
painting and "still-
life," among the
vase - painters and
panel-decorators ! —
" picturesqueness, "
among the etchers and workers on the illustrated press ! — Christian acerbity,
among the pre-Raphaelites ! — and landscape, among the hosts of practitioners.
To talk to any of these specialists, alone by himself, you would fancy there
was no other kind of art. But the art of tradition and history is the art which
FINE ART.
Cellini loved with all his passion and all his turbulence ; and this is the art of
"representing a beautiful human figure with correctness of design and in a
graceful attitude T
Under this tradition, beautified from old Greece and ennobled from Egypt,
Art has completely filled the south of Europe with a bland, lambent, civilizing
wave of feeling. Classical art, coming from Egypt and Etruria, invaded Italy
with a hundred thousand marble statues ; dived under the soil, and reappeared
in Raphael ; spread eastward to Venice, to revel in the luxury there ; took a
northward turn, and inspired Correggio in Parma and Rubens in Flanders ;
and so, modified according to race and clime, visited the grave hidalgos, and
overshadowed the easels of Murillo and Velasquez ; came finally to France, and
found a witty nation industriously worshipping artificial flowers. Here, in the
person of David, it struck down frivolity as with an arm of marble, and pre-
pared the foundations of the greatest school of art at present existing. Thus
is art homogeneous and continuous in the south of Europe.
All the while there was, lying in the cold water, and separated from the
European continent by an apparatus of chopping, perpendicular waves which
the best sailors have not often been able to regard without nausea — an island,
which it is impossible for us to regard with indifference, because it is our
parent. This island was called Albion, Angle-land or England. It had always
given the Continent a great deal of trouble. Caesar went over and made it
partly an Italian island ; Saint Austin went over and made it partly a Christian
island; William of Normandy went over and made it partly a French island;
none of which reforms are to our purpose until Benjamin West in 1763 put
on his broadbrim and went over and helped to make it an island of painters.
The history of England, in relation to European civilization, has been most
singular. Although insulated by the sea, England has never been willing' to
remain detached from the great rnental movements of Christendom. Full of
originality and the instinct to express herself, she mingled forcibly with all the
politics of the Continent ; she visited and colonized savage shores in every part
of the globe, until to-day, bursting out of Britain to stretch herself over India,
she is, as Disraeli says, an oriental rather than a European power. The moment
printing was invented she took her place at the head of modern letters ; but
in Art her development was extremely fitful and peculiar.
8 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Let us not for an instant surmise that the Saxon or Gothic mind is inca-
pable of art ; the cathedrals of Germany and England show a race artistically-
equal — at the time when cathedrals were the expression of art — with the Latin
race. But England, at the great revival of oil-painting, was found in a very
strange attitude. Conscious of noble deeds and personal worth, fond of visiting
but remote from visitors, she needed above all things the portrait-paintei'. For
y. ;/'. ChiiiNfrtfy, Pitix.
i 'jn /iij^eti &■ Snyder, Buff.
' Your Good Health .'
a long time, instead of forming her own celebrators, advertisers, commemora-
tors — whatever we choose to call them — she summoned them from the ends
of the earth. Zucchero was sent for from Italy to paint Queen Elizabeth, as
Holbein had been sent for from Augsburg to paint Henry VIII ; Vandyck was
tempted from Antwerp to paint Charles I, as Lely was, from the virtues and
the sugar-cured hams of Westphalia, to paint Nelly Gwyn. At the close of
the last century, however, one grcal native name in portraiture had risen into
FINE ART.
full renown: Reynolds had represented with superb talent the heroes of the
Augustan age, and he was an Englishman. Unsurpassable in portrait, Reynolds
was a tyro in all else ; if he tried an ideal scene, it would be good in so far
as it depended upon the attributes of portraiture, and entirely wanting in force
lO THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
for its other attributes. Beside him and his rival in portraiture, Gainsborough,
and the splendid satirist, Hogarth, the artists of the country were hardly noticed;
there was nobody fit to assert seriously and effectively the principles of classical
art, and there never had been — nobody able to paint the grand English batdes,
nobody capable of placing a Christian lesson in fresco, with any beauty, in the
domes of the churches. Dazzled by the splendor of Reynolds's genius, and
drilled by the influence of all the English tradition, which had been pouring
imported portraitists into the land for full three hundred years — ''Portraiture"
said the people, "is Art, and Art is Portraiture." "Not quite so," said West,
in effect, as he stepped quietly upon the scene : ''Art is the representation of
human beauty, ideally perfect in design, graceful and noble in attitude."
That was what West had to say; that was the eternal burden of his
preaching. He was a man of influence and success in his day, and England
would have done well if she could have carried out her academic education on
his line. Not a great man, nor a perfectly successful follower of Beauty, he
was eminently sane and sensible. He invented the camera obscura; he had the
pleasure of making Reynolds wince, by venturing to paint "The Death of
Wolfe" with the innovation of modern uniforms, instead of Roman garments.
His whole course of work was a standing rebuke to the undisciplined fancies
of FusELi. As for portraiture, he cheapened that by painting very poor like-
nesses himself. It is safe to say that he gave the nation more Ideas in the
way of balanced composition, elegance, sound training, and conception of the
great thoughts of the renaissance, than she had had up to his time. Under his
presidency the Academy was a safe school for the study of human beatity, of
accomplished design and of gj-ace in attitude. Unfortunately, however, what he
could teach and what he knew was not quite represented in what he wrought.
His works are left; his teaching is forgotten. His influence was a strong one
for half a centun,'; but the English nation could not long rest in the spirit of
his teachings, and the school of West, after correcting Fuseli, extinguishing
Barry, and giving a fair start to Allston and Trumbull, fell Into utter despair,
and blew out its brains In Havdon. English art took up the anecdotic vein of
Hogarth, which was followed with ability by Wilkie and Mulready. Its land-
scape school, invented by Wilson, became accomplished In Constable, incom-
mensurable In Turner. On the death lately of Macllse — a rather weak,
FINE ART. II
distorted reflection of Paul Delaroche — the last classic tradition seemed to die
out. The prominent men of the moment, like Hunt and Millais, are experi-
menters, chercheui^s. Except Leighton, there is scarce any one capable of
putting up a correct frescoed figure in an archway of the Kensington Museum.
The development of the nation, taking another of its strange caprices, has gone
over to industrial art. There is not an Englishman now living whose endeavor
could be said to be, in Cellini's sense, to represent a beautifiiL human figure,
■with correctness of design and in a graceful attitude.
That was the way in which our century of art was started for us in the
two foremost countries of the world. West and David, in their day, met on
equal terms, and West received an ovation in the Louvre. Both are bywords
of a slight contempt in the mouths of unthinking persons now, but not in
those of considerate men. They found it their business to take their two
nations by the shoulders, break off old habits suddenly, and set them in the
eternal way of art, the one way that has produced great works in time gone
by — the study of beaictifid human form, correct design, graceful composition.
They wished to knit the career of their countries to the great fabric of art
which has come unbroken from antiquity. The corresponding influence was
exerted at the same time on Germany by Raphael Mengs, who walked with
all the accuracy at his command in the footsteps of Raphael Sanzio. He
painted with the search for classic beauty, and he founded the Dresden Gallery
of antique statuary. That was the spirit of 1800 — a revival of classicism.
West's light went out completely in England and this country ; but in France,
the torch brandished by David was never quite suffered to drop to the ground.
His principles are assiduously practised at this moment ; and France, let us
confess, is the first art-producing country to-day.
It has taken some little time thus to set up these two worthies firmly on
their legs. But it seemed worth while to do so, because a period has now
supervened when painters trade on very limited specialties, making reputations
out of some small attainment that would only be a fraction of the discipline
of a thorough-going classic artist. But, as we have just said, the traditions of
David still form an equipment for various painters of reputation in the country
he adorned. It must not be supposed, however, that David was quite alone.
There is a whole group of artists belonging to the epoch of the French Revo-
13
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
lution, whose works compare together with a certain harmony. There was
Gerard, whose "Cupid and Psyche" is a painting that suggests some pure, cold
group of ancient sculpture ; there was Prudhon, whose faces caught the subtle,
penetrating smile so often represented in the works of Correggio. Of Prud-
hon's women, a critic has said, they are grisettes, of the Restoration period,
but designed by a painter of Athens ; and there was Girodet, a ripe and
classic draftsman, but afflicted in his coloring with a tinge of green ; of whose
famous Bible scene delineating the Flood, Thackeray remarks that it is a
venerable man in a green Deluge, clinging to a green tree in a green old age.
FINE ART.
13
The way in which David's time connects with our own time may be quite
simply explained. Only lately, in 1867, died the most faithful of his pupils, the
great painter Ingres. We know of no specimen of Ingres in this country
14 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
except lithographic studies of his figures ; but who that has seen it can forget
his dignified "Apotheosis of Homer," painted for a ceiHng in the Louvre, but
replaced by a copy on account of its singular value. In this great compo-
sition, amidst Homer and his fellow-bards, sit two woman-forms, supposed to
represent the Iliad and the Odyssey. The sacred anger of the warlike Iliad,
the deep fatigue of the travel-tossed Odyssey, are something memorable ; they,
look like grand primitive nymphs, conceived in the same spirit that designed
the vast Fates of the Parthenon. These two female forms, in their austerity
and uncontaminated beauty, remind us strongly of Delaroche's woman-spirits,
depicted in the central part of his principal work, "The Hemicycle." The
figures by Delaroche we refer to are those intended for Greece, Rome and
Fame. In Delaroche we have nearly the same largeness of style as in Ingres —
Titan women, each filled and inspired with a single idea. We look at the
women of Ingres — such as we have named and such as his exquisite Fountain
(or La Source^ — at the women of Delaroche, finding in them a something that
is not of our time, a something learned from the plain, grand Past, and we say.
For this thank master David. Observe, there is a certain advance in these
figures beyond the loftiest thoughts ever reached by David; but the direction
is the same ; it is not that a disciple is never to get beyond his teacher.
David, in all he did, kept much of the rigidity, the uncomfortable determination
never to be caught napping, which always marks the schoolmaster. But shall
not the pupil, crowned with honor and sympathy, keep up a veneration for the
wise and cautious old pedagogue ?
We will just mention some others in whom we believe the school of David
to be kept up or produced. Delaroche — his works, his Death of Elizabeth, his
Execution of fane Gray, his Piinces in the Tower, his Hemicycle, are quite
familiar from engravings — kept the accent of David quite as plainly as he did
that of his master, Gros. The clean drawing of David has cast an influence
on the Hcbc, the Beatrice and the Marguerite of Ary Scheffer; it has not
been for nothing in the elegant work of Gleyre — you remember his pictures,
the Separation of tJie Apostles, the Pompeian girls washing an infant, and resem-
bling ivory statuettes, in the galler}' of Mr. Johnston, of New York ; and above
all, his masterpiece, one of the loveliest dreams ever fastened upon canvas, the
scene where an old poet sits alone on the shore, while past him floats a boat
I'-ChariraA.'B.-noc^-
ROG-ER ARE AE&EMCAo
FINE ART. 15
in which all the muses are singing. It lingers in the highly-finished work of
Leopold Robert, whose fame rests chiefly on his Fishermen of the Adriatic
and the other pendants of that fine group of three pictures, where the life of
modern Italy is treated with the balanced harmony of antique bas-reliefs. It is
shown most clearly in the classic work of Gekome and all his school — he and
they the most leo;itimate descendants of David ; yes, in the noble and sculp-
tural composition of the Death of Casar; in the Gladiators hailing Vitellius in
the Atnphitheatre, in the Akibiades, the King Candatdes, and all that line of
paintings of the most eminent living classicist, a clear ray of illumination from
the age of the renaissance is visible. Another painter, who has not forgocten
this academic influence, though he takes vast liberties in making use of it, is
Couture. His masterpiece, the Decadence of the Roman Empire, is a vast colora-
tion of Veronese-gray, spotted here and there with rich blots of brilliancy, like
ribbons on a plain dress. The figures are life-size, and subjected, without
slavish fidelity, to the rules of classic design. Another classicist, of singular
chaste elegance, is Flandrin. His frescoes in the old church of Saint Germain-
des-Pres are masterpieces of thoughtful simplicity, while he is most analytical
in portraiture, and his likeness of Napoleon III makes the emperor look like
the very serpent of wisdom. Cabanel is a classicist in about the same degree
as Couture, though in a different way. His feeling ot grace is very exquisite,
to an almost effeminate degree ; his conception of Venus is tender as a rose-
leaf, soft as marrow, without any notion of the dignity of a Queen of Love.
His Florentine Poet, Nymph and Faim, and Aglaia are exquisitely beautiful.
Baudry is a painter almost the equal of Cabanel ; his Fortune and the Infant,
at the Luxembourg, is a luscious piece of flesh-modeling ; and his interior deco-
rations of the new opera-house are exceedingly choice. Bouguereau and Merle
are pseudo-classic in taste, exhibiting to the full that preponderating search for
elegant form which shows that the classic graft has taken firmly, and altered
the nature of the sap in the whole tree. Their style, shows, too, that waxy
smoothness adopted by the prize scholars who have been sent to Rome, in
imitation of Raphael and of Angelo. When such scholars return to Paris they
are called Italians, and wear their nickname often for ever. Their pictures, if
they go on showing the recollection ot the antique rather than a feeling for
modern life, are called academic studies, or academies, whatever they may rep-
i6
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
resent. Hebert, with his lovely, consumptive Italian girls, devoured by the
malaria; and Bonnat, with his healthy, rich transcripts of peasant life in Italy,
are a pair of admirable painters, whose works, however, can seldom be found
in this country. And so the influence of the antique dies gradually away, over
a line of artists of great personal force and originality, like the great Decamps,
or like Jules Breton, who paints the poetry of pastoral life so tenderly, or like
Millet, who paints its grime, its cark and care. In these painters there is but
a faint reflection of the Greek, or of the dictum of Benvenuto.
The reader may have been surprised at our tracing a resemblance to David
in Ary Scheffer, in Cabanel ; but these resemblances seem like identity itself
Elancht Ssevtn, Sc.
when we think of the contrasts offered b\' the rede/s to his school. Think of
Delacroix, with his turbulent riot of color and form. It is the property of an
academy, we may say, to succeed not only by its successes but by the reac-
tions against it. Victor Husfo would not have been so great a dramatist but
for the protest he felt against the classic stage. So Delacroix was forced by
classicism into his full power and glory of counteraction. The classical painters
indeed seem to stand together in a mass, when we compare them with Dela-
croix, or with Courbet, who paints with massive, vulgar strength the life of the
senses; or with Manet, who w^as told in despair by his master, Gleyre, "You
"ioi/l be the Michael Angelo of bad art!" or with the landsc^.pe specialists, like
Rousseau, Diipre, Pasini, and Belly ; or with the incident-painters, the reporters
FINE ART.
17
i8 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
or journalists of the brush, who have painted on every battle-field, from Vernet
in Africa to Yvon in the Crimea.
ViBERT and Zamacois are anecdotic or incident painters of another sort,
the latter now deceased, all too early. His dwarfs and courtiers and monks,
his matchless Education of a Prmce, show how his thoughts and genius survive
him, still lively and alert. The last great promise to go out in death was
Regnault, who seemed to have the world of art at his feet. As Zamacois
came from Spain to fight the Prussians, so did Regnault participate in the
glory and sadness of the war. In the last sortie from Paris, when the order
was given to fall back, his undaunted spirit caused him reluctantly to obey,
and linger for "one shot more," which cost him his life, and tis the young and
talented artist.
Tennyson lately, in dedicating to the Queen his completed collection of
"Idylls," took occasion to speak of "art with poisoned honey stolen from
France," an allusion which it would be hard for him to justify, because very
litde of the French art-method, whether it be poisonous or not, has ever got
into England in any way. But the laureate has an old grudge against the
French nation, which he cannot allude to without the least litde delicate aqui-
line curl of a sensitive nose ; and perhaps, after all, he was not speaking of
the fine arts, to which he seems never to have paid any attention, but of
dramas or romances. We are about to leave art in France, at any rate,
whether dangerous or not, and say a few words about a new art-development
which is attracting attendon under the name of the Roman school. It must
be called the Roman school because the practitioners are Spaniards. The
geographical name is a poor one at any rate, and we had better allude to the
school as the members themselves designate it, as the school of the spot — the
spot or blot, or, in the French language, the tache.
It is to be observed that one great and unexpected benefit of the French
Academy has accrued in the education it has given to other nations. Paris,
has been of late years filled with strangers of every race, who have brought
into the atelier some of their national artisdc habits, and have looked at the
model in a different way from the way of the French. Thus does a great
academy receive the benefit of new suggestions in return for the routine benefit
she confers.
FINE ART. 19
Among- these foreign students were Hollanders, recollecting the secret of
the old Holland school, which sees nature in a succession of taches, which
reckons the tree standing against the sky, the herd moving in the lush pasture,
tlie distant windmill printed against the vapors of a watery climate, not as so
many rotundities, but as blots against the groundwork ; that, in fact, is the true
impression made upon the optical sense, rather than the impression of relief or
modeling, which is the result of experience and calculation. The Holland
painters, in their masterly simplicity, often had the courage to paint nature
precisely as they found it printed on the eye, as a composition of color-patches.
Something of this kind had been going on in the history of Spanish art. Cer-
tain masters of Spain, by the exclusive study of "values," had arrived at a
method of translating all the flash of open-air color upon the canvas. Values,
you know, are the degrees and reliefs which one tint makes against another
or against a deeper or lighter shade of itself. The Spaniard Zurbaran's painting
is "melted," as the critics express it, "in a certain interior flame;" and Goya's
shadows are broad blotted suffusions. Now, a classical painter, like Poussin,
looking at a group or at any kind of scene, pays special attention to the sweep
and meaning of the boundary-lines dividing the objects. To dwell upon this
and refine upon it, as the classicists do, is almost inevitably to forget the
pursuit of values, the relief of shade upon shade. The new school trains the
eye differently. Look, now, upon the scene as a simple mosaic of spots ; get
the exact tone, the precise degree of light or dark, the actual way in which
one color relieves against or reflects from another ; make yourself thoroughly
impartial ; a lady's face is before you : think of it as if it were a figure iii a
kaleidoscope, but study the shapes made by the high-lights against the planes
of the features, and the precise boundary and tone of the shadow. A child
is playing in a garden ; study him as if he were a bouquet of roses, but place
him in his exact relations of tone with the shrubbery and the sky. By watching
in this spirit, you surprise nature at her secret tricks ; you find how she gives
emphasis to a tint by an extremely subtile contrast, by saving herself up for
the point of greatest brilliancy and purest delivery of the color ; you notice
how objects placed together reflect mutually a thousand audacious hues. Now
paint these things as a study of tints, and as a study of light and shade, getting
each hue into place in its proper situation, size and outline, hardly knowing
20
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
whether you are painting a lady or a camel. You must not set down the tints
you see in the open air, neither ; they will not produce the effect of nature
so. Painting is not materializing colors : it is translation ; chiaroscuro is not
matching values: it is translating them. To succeed in all this, you will have
your hands pretty full ; and you will have been a pretty good draftsman if,
while attending almost entirely to your patches, you have produced a figure
ai'M«,
: i
•.*
m
k'an
i
^=^s^
The
Reproof,
j"u
11 ^ ^n^atr, Lita.
that will pass muster in drawing. If you succeed, you have turned out a study
a la tache. Now, Rembrandt could make a figure look bright by manipulating
his shadows into that tremendous depth he uses. Boldini will make a figure
look bright when relieved against a brilliant light-blue sky, and without putting
a speck of black in his picture. Boldini. by-the-by, is driven to strange expe-
dients in translating (that is the word, not rendering) the reliefs of nature. In
FINE ART.
21
an example of Mr. Cutting's, the lady's satin dresses are set upon a local back-
ground as opaque and inky as the inkiest shadows sometimes employed by the
fifjpijrai^i™ IMMiiiH
Hungarian painter Munkacsy. Painting "by the spots" need not be done in
splendid colors either. The photograph is one of the best proficients of the
22 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 18 j6.
whole school, and the photograph works in monochrome. Nothing can exceed
the calmness with which the photographs will blend and lose outline in the
abandoned pursuit of values. Set photography to copying a number of persons
scattered over a hill, getting berries or nuts. You probably cannot tell whether
the objects in the picture are people or rocks, or incidents of the ground;
but the vahies are relatively right ; trust the camera for that. Photography
has in this way been a foster-father to the school, and given it many a hint.
Some of the practitioners are by no means colorists. Madrazo paints under
a veil, sometimes, of light blue or purple ; perhaps he has been fond of
watching the broadened, "unified" values in moonlight. Now when to pro-
ficiency in translating the spots, you intend to add proficiency in expression
and character, a sense of beauty, and the plastic feeling for elegant form, you
had better prepare yourself by being a great man beforehand. You must draw
so easily and well that you scarcely think of it as you carelessly sketch with
your felicitously-chosen colors ; you must color so naturally and easily and
happily that you know just what two colors to blend for your tint, and what
the proportion, by a second nature. Of course, if you are working to get the
richness and directness of nature's colors, you never mix more than two paints
together ; and you cannot go over and mend and pare your outline, for mixing
the wet tints kills the color. The truth is, in practice, a good picture in this
style must be made over and over again. It is thus that Fortuny is said to
have worked ; he made a study in light and shade, or repeated studies in
color, ruthlessly sacrificing all but the ultimate picture, when the patchwork of
blots is struck on in just the right way, so as to be perfect in color, perfect in
vahces, perfect in relief, and at the same time masterly in expj^ession and drawing.
The utterly careless-looking sketch of FoRTUNv's you are looking at may have
been tried for again and again, like throwing a handfiil of darts through a
quantity of rings — only when all the rings are filled and all the darts are gone
home is the task perfect. It was such results as this that Regnault had been
studying in Fortunv's Roman studio, when he wrote, as we find it in his cor-
respondence from Rome. "Oh, Fortuny, you keep me from sleeping!" "Ah,
Fortuny, ta m'empeches de dormir !" We will quote the words of a late French
critic, in balancing the good and evil of the method in question : "These youthful
inventors work in imitation of certain Spanish masters. They sacrifice to color
FINE ART. 23
their drawing, their rehef and their perspective, in hopes of preserving with
greater freshness the tint, the blot, to use the conventional expression. It would
be too foolish to argue about this determined exclusion of modeling and paint-
ing ; we will not reckon up all the qualities which make of this art something
quite differently undertaken, and which fill it with a new order of difficulties.
It is a mania, and time will judge it, alas ! quickly enough. Speaking for our-
selves alone, we feel that we are the contemporaries, the accomplices of these
improvisations played upon the pencil ; they bring out with a few touches
certain accents of modern, contemporary Hfe, and we cannot help finding more
or less attraction in them."
The Spanish-Roman mode of painting is an example of the kind of spurts
which take place in the career of art, whose progress advances not so much
by a uniform flowing movement as by a series of ebullitions. A young painter
has been struck by some unnoticed aspect of nature, or by an old master's
picture in a gallery ; he talks about it in his club, paints a few novel-looking
studies, excites the emulation of his friends, and behold the formation of a
fresh sect ! Thus the young Mariano Fortuny, having observed an effect of
light in a Peter De Hooge, and a dash of color in a Herrera, was equipped
for the revelation of the "splashy" school. Similarly, in England, thirty years
since, it occurred very suddenly to Gabriel Rossetti and Millais that the
masters who wrought before the time of Raphael were sincerer copyists of
nature than the great Renaissance painters, and safer examples for a tyro to
follow. They began to work according to their convictions, and formed the
school of the "pre-Raphaelites."
The term pre-Raphaelite is a misnomer (besides its awkwardness of form),
for the practitioners in question do not pretend to follow the technical methods
of the artists who preceded Raphael. They simply emulate the faithfulness
and literal fidelity of those pioneers, while they freely deal in subjects con-
nected with our own more complicated civilization. They apply the keen
literal eyesight of Perugino and Masaccio to topics which would have made
Perugino and Masaccio stare. Their peculiarity is their minute copy-work
after nature as they see it. This addiction has given some of them a curious
leaning towards the minutiae of natural objects. If Millais paints the drowning
of Ophelia, we shall find Ophelia not so much the heroine of the scene as the
24
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
foliage of Ophelia's willow. The copy-work of nature is true beauty — nature
not selected, nor cured of her irregularities and defects. Millais had rather
copy an English girl's face for an Eastern scene than imagine an Oriental
one ; and this, artistically, is right enough. In his drawing of the " Pearl of
Great Price," the Holman Hunt
paints his concep-
good man who
sells his all for the
jewel is an Orien-
tal, but his daughter
standing by his side
is a London house-
maid. Other pre-
Raphaelites, how-
ever, are more scru-
pulous than this ;
they must not only
have a model to
copy literally, but
they will go to the
ends of the earth
to obtain the proper
one. We have had
described to us with
minute and inti-
mate good-fellow-
ship the handsome
young Jewish car-
penter of Bethle-
hem, from whom
y. S. Harlttf. &.
The Lillle Samanlan.
tion of the Saviour.
This is well ; but
Mr. Hunt goes
much further : for
his picture of "The
Awakened Con-
science" he painted
his background in
a maison damnee ;
and we grieve to
think of the incon-
venience to which
he would put him-
self if anybody
should give him an
order to paint the
casting out of Mary
Magdalen's seven
devils or the shear-
ing of Samson's
locks. There are
certam respects m
which the British
pre-Raphaelites follow their exemplars to a degree of pernicious fidelity; the
masters before Raphael never thought of imitating atmospheric effect ; it was
the Venetians, with their love of landscape backgrounds, and Rubens, with his
Flemish traditions, and Velasquez, who developed to a high degree the soft
breathable sense of air in a picture, and the film of atmospheric distance
FINE ART.
25
26 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIB ITION, 1876.
which we feel to stretch between ourselves and any scene we contemplate in
nature. When a lover of pictures learns to appreciate this quality in a work
of art he is always on the lookout for it, and always miserable if he misses it.
But most of the pre-Raphaelites paint away in perfect serenity without it, as
their models, Perugino and Lippi and Giotto, did in their time.
We in America have had a very imperfect opportunity to contemplate the
works of the English school. Some few years back, an importation was made
of important English oil-paintings, and many of our readers will remember
how they used to admire them arranged at the old Academy of Fine Arts on
Chestnut Street — the knightly grace of "Prince Hal," assuming the Crown,
from the scene in Shakespeare, the minute carefulness of Holman Hunt's
scene from the "Eve of Saint Agnes," and the pathos of "Romeo and Juliet
in the Tomb," by Leighton. The attempt to open a commerce in English
pictures, in quantity, has not been attempted since. Mr. Henry Blackburn, it
is true, lately brought over a quantity of good examples of the British water-
color school ; but difficulties with the custom-house have prevented a repetition
of the experiment. The English are high appreciators and devoted buyers of
the worthier works of their own countrymen, and purchase them at rates which
exclude competition from abroad, so that British pictures are confined to Britain
with a strictness known to no other national school of art.
In noticing these successive upheavals in the geology of painting, it is
impossible to omit allusion to the Munich school. Munich is to-day the most
formidable rival of Paris as a centre of art, so far as its power to draw off
the young students of America is concerned. About half a century ago
Ludwig of Bavaria built the Glyptothek, or sculpture-museum, in the capital
of his state, and this edifice was followed by an Odeon, a Pinathokek or
picture-museum, and the Walhalla at Ratisbon. Cornelius, as Director, raised
the Academy of Arts to a pitch of great eminence, and his successor, Kaul-
bach, continued to give the city prominence as an art-source, by his very
imaginative and inventive but ill-colored works. It only remained for Piloty,
in somewhat later times, to assert his claims as a colorist, for the school to
unite ever)' kind of importance as an educational nucleus. We shall revert
immediately to Munich art in considering the talent of its pupil Maekart. It
remains to notice, as the completion of the list of schools that have obtained
FINE ART. 27
special attention here of late years, the Diisseldorf school, which burst upon
America all in a mass a few years before the civil war, in the large collection
of large pictures exhibited in Broadway, New York, and is already sunk in
oblivion, — and the Belgian school, which has turned out, at its headquarters in
Brussels, works by Leys, Alfred Stevens, Gallait and Knaus, worthy to rank
with any productions of the time.
To revert to the Munich school : its most classical living practitioner is Karl
Piloty, and its most adventurous offshoot is probably John or Hans Maekart.
It is easy to recall specimens now-a-days to the recollection of almost any
wide-awake person who "lives in the world," because the subjects at least of
all good works are, by means of prints and photographs, so widely dissemi-
nated. Many readers will accordingly remember Piloty by such compositions
as his "Assassination of Caesar" and his "Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn."
His pupil, Maekart, has taken wider flights. He attacks nature on its
decorative side, and paints works whose destination, like the works of the
Venetian artists, is primarily that of making fine rooms look finer. We are
here, be it noted, at the very antipodes of the pre-Raphaelite Englishman, the
motive of whose work is to make the spectator think, to persuade him to be
indifferent to apparent ugliness, and to chain his attention to some problem
of character or intellect. The first works of Maekart's seen in this country
were a large pair called "Abundantia," representing the riches of the sea
and land respectively, brought over last winter, and exhibited for a season
in New York. For splendor of ornamental effect it is safe to say that
nothing to equal them has ever been imported to our shores. With a
dazzled pleasure that excluded minute attention, the eye grasped a cluster
of soft colossal female forms, playing with shells or fruits, displaying the
richest lustres of blonde flesh and gorgeous tissues, and revealing here and
there, by a happy ingenuity, the flash of the gold ground on which the figures
were painted. These were works of his youth, executed for the dining-hall of
a particular house, and not intended to be judged by the strictest rules of
plastic accuracy. On examination the eye could detect many a lapse of
drawing, which seemed, however, not so much a want of ability as a condition
of voluptuous carelessness, and a desire to fasten the color and the impression
in all its freshness immediately upon the canvas. To the painter's youth
28 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
likewise belongs his composition of "The Seven Sins." Another of his works
is "The Cleopatra," another "The Triumph of Ariadne." His "Catherine
Cornaro," of which we give, from the original in the 1876 International
Exhibition, the only cut that the public has seen, and a very good one — is
perhaps his masterpiece. It seems to be inspired by the happiest influence
from Paul Veronese, and plays the same part as one of that master's crowded
compositions in elevating the mind to a state of proud and noble happiness
by the contemplation of an ideal festival-world bathed in heaven's own silver
!•//' v\ A'^w'vm '^■rp-\TO\\v
/. D. MUltl. J'mx
In the Day of Xaplcs.
light. The subject is that fair Venetian who endowed Venice with the realm
of Cyprus. Catherine Cornaro, a noblewoman of Venice about the middle of
tlie fifteenth century, became the wife and widow of the Cyprian king, James
de Lusignan. After ruling the island as queen for a quarter of a century, she
at length conferred the island on her native countr)' by abdication — certainly
the queenliest gift that Venice ever received. The painter in dealing with the
subject has pleased his fancy with the various sumptuous images evoked by
this passage of history — the singular idea of a lonely lady governing the
island consecrated to Venus from the earliest dawn of fable, and then by a
feminine caprice of abnegation giving up her state and becoming once more a
FINE ART.
29
Venetian republican. He accordingly represents her seated on a wharf, whence
steps descend into the sea, and whither the argosies of Venice direct their
sails. Maidens kneel at her feet to offer her flowers and treasure; a statesman
like a Venetian doge stands at the right hand of her throne ; her courtiers
?,\l?h-^
G. IV. Maynard, Pinx.
1776.
y. Rae, Eng.
are women; torms of beauty surround her on every side; musicians peal out
her praises through their instruments of gold. It is the pomp and wealth of
the Renaissance in Venice. The appearance of this picture definitely secured
for Maekart the esteem of his fellow artists, and made friends of some of
his previous enemies, the cridcs. Among the latter, Bruno Meyer, who had
20 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
spoken very severely about some of the artist's earlier work, declared that
Paul Veronese's paintings must have looked like this when they were fresh
from the easel.
Another great pupil of Munich and Piloty is here represented by Wagner's
"Chariot Race," a picture already somewhat familiar to the American public
by means of Moran's admirable etching of this masterpiece of modern genius.
The admirers of the spirited etching have now the pleasure of beholding the
original painting in all its beauty of color, and while dazzled with its action
and splendor, will not forget the success of the American interpreter in his
dashing- engfravinof.
When Romulus induced the Sabine women to come to Rome, it was to
see the chariot-racing that those ladies trusted themselves in the city of the
"Sanctuar}'," and this, according to the legend, was the first circus, or exhibition
for horse-racing, ever held. Another legend informs us that L. Tarquinius,
about 600 B. c, commemorated his success in arms by an exhibition of races
and athletic sports in the Murcian Valley, in which temporary platforms were
erected by individuals for personal, family or friends' use. These platforms
surrounding the course gave place, before the death of Tarquinius, to a per-
manent building with reijular tiers of seats in the manner of a theatre ; to this
the name of "Circus M.\ximus" was subsequently given, but it was more
generally known as i/ie Circus, because it surpassed in extent and splendor all
other similar buildings. .A few masses of rubble-work in a circular form are
now shown the visitor in Rome, as all that remains of the ever-famous Circus
Maximus ; and although there were a considerable number of buildings of a
like nature in Rome, they are all destroyed now, with the exception of a small
one on the Via .Appia, called the Circus of Caracalla, which is in a good state
of preservation.
In the chariot race, each chariot was drawn by four horses ; four, six and
sometimes eight chariots started at one time ; the charioteer, standing in the
car, had the reins passed around his back: this enabled him to throw all his
weight against the horses by leaning backward ; but this rendered his situation
dangerous in case of an upset, occasionally resulting in serious accidents or
death ; to avoid this peril, if possible, each driver carried a knife at his waist
for the purpose of cutting the reins.
FINE ART. 31
The foremost driver in Wagner's picture has an air of mad hilarity and
o-ratification in liis face, and even in his whole bearing ; and as he seems to
wish to cast his eyes to see how much ahead he is of the driver on his left,
who is imbued with carefulness and fixity of purpose, he little recks that one
of his horses has reared in excitement, and may at any moment cause the loss
of the race and imperil the lives of all concerned.
The enthusiasm of the Romans tor the races exceeded all bounds. Lists
of the horses with their names and colors, and those of the drivers, were cir-
culated, and heavy bets made. The winning drivers were liberally rewarded
with considerable sums of money, so that many of these charioteers, according
to Juvenal, were very wealthy.
In Wagner's delineation of "The Chariot Race," he has embraced as many
of the prominent features of an ancient circus as could artistically be brought
within the canvas. To the left of us are the Emperor and his household ;
opposite to this imperial group, on the low wall, may be the president, or
judge, and a number of spectators ; near the ground of this low wall there is
a grating : this undoubtedly is designed by the artist to indicate the proximity
of the officiating priests' chambers. A portion of the pillar, on which were
placed the conical balls, is behind this group, and a little further back is shown
the cylindrical goal. The immense space between this and the Triumphal
Gateway, and the great height of the building with its myriads of people, are
not exaggerations, for according to very early writers this circus was several
times enlarged until, at the time of Julius Caesar, it was over eighteen hundred
feet long (the length of the Main Building of the Centennial Exhibition), six
hundred feet wide, and capable of containing three hundred and eighty-five
thousand spectators. A further idea of the size of the Circus Maximus is
formed by comparing it with the capacity of the Coliseum at Rome, which was
capable of holding only about eighty-seven thousand people.
The mention of Piloty as a great master of great pupils, represented in
this Exhibition, suggests another master represented by a pupil famous in the
contributions already made to art, and worthily here represented in "The
Vintage Festival," of which a very fine wood engraving furnishes a good
interpretation on page 17 — Alma Tadema, a Dutchman by birth, and a pupil
of the late Baron Leys. His works are most agreeable and varied, and cer-
32
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
F.. Caroni. Sc
The Telegram of Love.
tainly more suggestive and instructive than pictures usually seen in public
galleries, and they throw a light, evidently the reflection of a careful student,
FINE ART.
33
0. Becker, Pinx.
Van Jiigtn & Snyder, £n£
Rizpah Protecting the Bodies of her Sons.
34 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
on the manners and customs whose eccentricity raised the cry of "O temporal
O mores!" from Cicero.
The painter of "The Vintage Festival," whose full name is Lourens Alma
Tadema, was born in Dronryp, in Friesland, and for many years resided in
Paris, receiving medals in that city and in Brussels for the uncommon merit
of his works. Since the Franco-Prussian war he has lived in London ; the
artists and art-lovers there have offered him that warm reception which their
nation has ever accorded to foreign talent naturalizing itself among them, and
which is at this moment enjoyed as well by Tadema's imitator, Tissot, as by
the Americans, Boughton, Hennessey, Miss Lea, and Arthur Lumley, while its
sincerity and cordiality remind us of the honorable treatment in England of
Lely, Kneller, Vandyck, Rubens, and Holbein. Mr. Tadema is one of the most
eminent living archaeological painters; his works restore the antique life of
Greece, Rome and Egypt with that fulness and accuracy of detail which his
teacher, Baron Leys, conferred on mediaeval subjects. He exhibits now at every
annual display of the Royal Academy, and has contributed no less than six
of his most important works to the English section of the International Exhi-
bition. They are "The Vintage Festival," which we engrave, "The Mummy,"
"Convalescence," in oil-color; and "The Picture," "The Three Friends," and
"History of an Honest Wife," in water-color — the last subject in fact being three
pictures framed together on account of the connected theme. The "Vintage"
(page 17) is of all these the most important. It represents the solemn dedi-
cation to Bacchus of the first fruits of the wine-press, selecting only the more
elevated and dignified features of the ceremony — those deeply symbolic features,
connected with the branches and fruits of the vine, the progress of the deity
as a conqueror of the East, and his descent into hell, which touched the hearts
of the early Christians, so that the Bacchic mystery was admitted as a type of
the Christian, and the daughter of the first Christian emperor was buried in a
casket enwreathed with Bacchic grapes and symbols, carved in enduring por-
phyry. In Mr. Tadema's exquisite picture we see the sacred procession winding
into a Roman temple to ofter homage to the planter of the vine. A beautiful
priestess, crowned with grapes and holding a torch, advances toward the statue
of the god at the left; turning her lovely face to the procession that follows
her, she awaits the arrival of the offerings, while near the shrine some ardent
FINE ART. 35
priests, with panther-slcins tied around their throats, wave the cups of hbation
in ecstatic expectancy. Three flute-girls, with the double pipe bound to the
mouth of each, a pair of dancers with tambourines, and a procession solemnly
bearing wine-jars and grapes, advance along the platform, whose steps are seen
covered with ascending worshippers and joyous Romans as far as the eye can
reach through the colonnades of the temple. The perfect execution of a pythos
or earthen wine-tub, enwreathed with the Bacchic ivy, and planted near the
tripod in the centre of the scene, attracts attention. The grace and elegance
of the chief priestess are positively enchanting. She forms as she stands a
white statue of perfect loveliness, quite outdazzling the Bearded Indian Bacchus
whose marble purity sheds a light around the shrine. The most unexpected
success of the artist, however, is that sense of religious calm and solemn grati-
tude which he has managed to diffuse over a ceremony dedicated to such a
power as the spirit of the grape. Everything shows that the symbol as accepted
by the early Church was most prominent in his mind, and that he wished to
represent the parallelism between the True Vine and its imperfect type. The
worshippers, elated by a really religious rapture, proceed to the offering with
all the decorum of the Christian agape or love-feast, and the ornaments of the
temple — pictures and votive images — hang upon the columns precisely like the
"stations" and ex-voto offerings of a modern Roman church. The technical
qualities of the painting are admirable; the action and character of the figures
are completely Roman ; the texture of the different marbles is felicitously given,
and the silvery flood of light and air deluging the temple successful in the
extreme.
We would like to dwell with greater fulness on the works of this artist,
both because he reveals and teaches so much, and because a certain austerity
and simplicity in his style keep him a little above the comprehension of the
vulcrar. The limits of this work, however, have been strained to admit even
so imperfect a glimpse of his merits, and we must pass to other subjects. We
cannot quite omit mention, however, of "The Mummy," conspicuous by its
strangeness and antique truth, in which the interior of an Alexandrian palace,
filled with funereal preparations, is treated in oil with all the luminous limpidity
of water-color; nor of "The Picture," in which a Roman painter's shop is
realized for us; nor of "The History of an Honest Wife," a quaint and moving
36
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
story connected with the early Christianization of France. It is the peculiar
distinction of Mr. Tadema to turn out in every picture a composition utterly
unlike anything that has ever been painted before. The intense devotion of
his mind to archaeological research is rewarded by the unearthing of quantities
TViOJ. Il.tr!. J;,ix.
fan /«iV
Ktene ValUy, Adirondacks.
of truths so old that they have the air of novelty; the texture and pattern of
ancient garments, the ornaments of buildings in mixed transitional periods, the
habits of a vanished civilization, are made to flash on the eye like a revelation.
Not a shoe, not a finger-ring, but is of the epoch represented ; the monstrous
FINE ART.
37
yno. Constable, Pinx.
The Lock.
frizzled wigs of the^ latter empresses, the thick plaited ones of Egyptian kino-s,
the tasteless cumber of Pompeian or Roman colonial architecture, are set down
38 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
remorselessly, with a love of the bizarre that sometimes verges upon carica-
ture. With all this book-learning, his style is generally direct, limpid and
transparent to a high degree ; the simple sweetness of his coloring, and the
soft tide of air that is felt to play easily through his interiors, are as perfect
as in the work of the most ignorant painter of natural appearances,- who ever
confined his copy-work to his "impressions."
We have in Mr. Tadema the artist of the grand Teutonic blood conferring
his talent upon the English race of his adoption. It is singular, ever since the
"Tedeschi" poured into Italy and revolutionized Its architecture, how constantly
they have enriched the blood of other nations with their intellect and art. The
Teuton is not very flexible, but whatever he learns to do becomes a fixed fact
in the world. Not a country of Europe but has gained in stable progress from
the intermixture of the Gothic strain, and in America he has come to stay, and
plants himself at every foot of our advance like a sheet-anchor. German talent
— in the person of Mr. Schwarzmann — has adorned the Centennial Park with
buildings, arbors and bridges; German talent, in the same personification, has
furnished to the group of Exhibition buildings its two finest examples — the
utterly diverse Memorial Hall, witii its classic arcades, and Horticultural Hall,
with its ornate Arabian splendor. .A German artist, Mr. Pilz, was the author
of the two statues of Pegasus, in bronze, which restively perch, with clipped
wings, in front of the Art Building, where are enshrined the treasures we have
to consider. A German artist, Mr. Mueller, prepared for the dome of the same
hall the colossal figure of "Columbia," in persistent metal, to welcome the
nations to the feast of Industry and Commerce, — the international peacemakers.
This statue, by-the-bye, although it has been sharply criticised, holds fol'th a
salutary meaning in the easily-read symbols of Its posture : the hand, presentmg
no sword, but the peaceful bays; the bowed head of salutation and welcome;
the crown of savage feathers, adorning the forehead of a Cybele of the wil-
derness, whose diadem has not yet crystallzed into towers. As we pause, before
entering, in tlie shadow of the shielding wing of the monumental Pegasus, we
behold the fostering fortitude of Teutonic art realizing, strengthening, solidifying,
and constructing the shelter of Industry for all the world. The Memorial Hall,
before us, spreading its vistas of circular arches to right an^ lelt, is just such
a patient restoration of Roman architecture as V^on Klenze might have drawn
05
m
FINE ART. 39
upon cardboard to show to his patron, Ludwig of Munich; and, crowning every
pedestal and pinnacle with art of the same national parentage, we see the
shadows of the Industries, of America, and of the gigantic mountain eagle,
throwing themselves from the parapets above to the sward beneath.
The silhouette or outline of the crest of Exhibition Palaces is a very rich
and varied one, whether seen from a nearer or a more comprehensive view.
An American artist, Mr. E. D. Lewis, has been struck with the effect they
make, in crowning Lansdowne Terrace, from the opposite side of the Schuyl-
kill, and has painted a beautiful, sunshiny, autumn-tinted picture of the same,
which lorms one of the ornaments of the American art department. Mr. Lewis
has often been praised by Hamilton, the great landscapist, for his ability in
making a painting "look luminous." This he does by a simple system of
contrasts, without any heavy Rembrandt shadows or Carravaggio blackness.
Whatever scene his pencil touches seems to be caressed by a ray of light.
Some time since he went to Cuba, and painted "The Queen of the Antilles"
in a large brilliant composition, and the magic sunshine of the tropics seems
to have clung around his pencil ever since. Mr. Lewis, born to uncommon
privileges among the best part of the Philadelphia social melange, might have
excusably sacrificed some portion of his art-industry to the prosecution of
drawing-room successes ; but though a genial and agreeable society-man, ready
for any parlor knight-errantry, he toils at his profession in a steady, prolific
way that no poor brush-wielder laboring for his pay can possibly surpass.
The mention of this brilliant landscapist reminds us that the United States
have loner claimed to have one of the foremost amonor the existino- schools oi
landscape art — enthusiastic patriots used to say, the very foremost. Our natural
scenery is certainly the widest in range, and among the most picturesque in
detail, possessed by any country of the globe, and should be the inspiration of
a noble style of delineation. The proud eminence awarded by native judges
to our school of scenery-painting began with Thomas Cole, whose poetical and
imaginative way of introducing allegory into landscape was much to the taste
of "fifty years syne." His pupil. Church, and the eminent Albert Bierstadr,
came next into prominence, with what began to be called the "panoramic"
school of landscape, and the public saw with amazement vast scenes on enor-
mous canvases, that seemed to compete in dimensions with the original
40
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
mountains and forests whose portraits were represented. This is not the place
to speak ot the wonderful works of Church — canvases so large and so minutely
finished that each may be called an accumuladon of miniatures.
Mr. Bierstadt, having established his reputation by a fine study of a
church-portal, in the Dusseldorf style, called "Sunshine and Shadow," found
himself famous, and began to turn his attendon to the Titanic scenery of our
E. Carefti, ruix.
X j« /n£ctt C" Snyder, Lng.
L Africaitu.
far West, producing several very comprehensive and very striking pictures of
the Rocky Mountains. To this class of subjects, whicli still forms the theme
of his warmest predilection, belongs the scene of "Western Kansas," of which
we present a careful steel engraving. It is one of the natural "parks" with
which nature has bestrewn the American Occident — scenes which, when man first
bursts upon them, amaze him by their appearance of preparation and deliberate
culture. Here Is the tiny lake, with its trim island, such as kings construct
A' DUlilz. Pinx.
i and My Pipe.
42 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
with dainty care for the grounds of their palaces. On the island, which is a
natural bank of flowers, spreads an umbrageous and symmetrical tree — no
spindling stem from the forest, but a well-rounded, broad, shadowy "park"
tree ; it is such a tree as Wordsworth describes in one of his prose prefaces,
which being recommended to the owner as a profitable subject to fell for
timber, the peasant replied, "Fell it! I had rather fall on my knees and worship
it." And, indeed, worship is the natural impulse in the presence of one of
these gigantic overshadowers of the earth; trees, as Bryant reminds us, were
the first temples. Mr. Bierstadt's magnificent specimen makes a felicitous fore-
ground incident for him; and others, only diminished by distance, spread far
towards the horizon. The scene would be an English nobleman's game-preserve;
but, advancing ponderously from the left, intrude the mammoth brutes that no
game-preserve on earth contains, except the Indian's, and stamp it as the natural
hunting-ground of the Native American. We see there the drinking-place of
the bison, and the garden of the primitive red Adam. It is a fortunate thing
that Mr. Bierstadt was able to spare so characteristic a specimen from his
easel — though easel-pictures are hardly what this artist's gigantic works gene-
rally would be called — and that the world of strangers collected here on the
Atlantic seaboard should be able to travel thus, on the magical broomstick of
one of his colossal brushes, into the heart of the Great West.
What the Centennial visitor from the oulre-mer is first apt to see, however,
is New York harbor, not the grassy ocean of the prairie. An attractive painting
by Mr. Edward Moran, of New York, copied in the large wood-cut on page 21,
shows that superb and starry spectacle of the land-lights of America, which first
causes the immigrant's eye to da^ce with hope and his heart to swell with
ambition as he comes to conquer his opportunity among the free. Here is the
city spread between the mouths of the Hudson and East rivers, here is the dull
and ponderous fortification on Governor's Island, all pierced and pricked with
twinkling lights like a fairy scene in the theatre. How many sturdy men have
looked upon the inspiration of these lights with irrepressible tears! For how
many has the pause at Sandy Hook, the debarcation at Castle Garden, meant
success, opportunity, renown even, in contrast with the certain continuance of
degradation in that darker and older world! The able and successful men we
can reckon around us, the public men who have risen to command, have in a
FINE ART. 43
surprising- number of instances been taken from the ranks of those strong,
muscular, serious, plain men whom we see idling around the walks of Castle
Garden in the first day of their unaccustomed liberty, waiting to " take occasion
by the hand." Such are the seed of the new earth. To-day they are of the
million — to-morrow of the millionaires. To-day they are nobodies, rocked over
the flashing waves of the Bay into the embrace of that twinkling crescent of
lights : soon they are individuals, entities, sovereigns, with every chance to
conquer the esteem of their kind by power, wealth, or intellect. This is the
sort of legend that seems to be whispering forth out of the rippled waves and
rolling moon of Mr. Moran's picture, a fine augury to greet the subjects of
European monarchs as they face it. The painter, a man of self-made *p?tJgress
in art, belongs to a family of brothers who are all curious instances of inborn
talent and perseverance conquering a success among the American people, so
hospitable to ideas. Mr. Edward Moran and his brother Thomas have enjoyed
the advantages of an Americo-British art-education : they have profited almost
as much by the English artist Turner as by the American artist Hamiltoa.
Thomas Moran, — about equally known by his fine "Yellowstone" scene in the
Capitol at Washington, as by the remarkable book-illustrations which he scatters
from his home at Newark to the best magazines and art-publications of the
land — can be judged in the Exhibition by five landscapes in widely-separated
styles. The "Dream of the Orient" plainly shows his extraordinary admiration
for Turner, of whose works he has made so many copies of the rarest fidelity;
while "The Mountain of the Holy Cross" is more in the style qf his monu-
mental works at the Capitol.
Another brother, Peter Moran, is an accomplished practitioner in the more
difficult line of cattle and figure painting; while a younger one, John, is one
of the first topographical photographers in the country. By Peter Moran, the
cattle-painter aforesaid, we present on page 9 the spirited subject, "The Return
of the Herd." In a pleasant rolling country near the Brandywine or the Wissa-
hickon the herdsman and his dog are driving home the cows after the soft
afternoon storm which makes the herbage so tempting for a lino-erine bite.
Mr. P. Moran's cattle are always obviously studied from nature. In the present
picture, the black head of the central animal, relieved against the brightest sky
where the storm breaks away, makes fins pictorial effect for the artist; and the
44
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
pretty play of the near cow and calf is true to life. The four brothers we
have named live in different cities, but their starting-point was Philadelphia, of
whose academic art-training they are creditable alumni.
The steel-plate engraving from the picture called "Brighove-to for a Pilot"
can hardly be a representation of an American scene, from the presence of the
windmill on the shore— though, for that matter, there are windmills on the
FINE ART.
45
Long Island coast, and upon other exposed parts of the American seaboard.
Something in the crisp freshness of the air and light — light and air not used
by so many centuries of sea faring practice as the European — makes us
connect this picture with E. Moran's "New York Harbor," just above-men-
tioned, and assign the scene to our own shores. At any rate, it is a spirited
and telling composition — the small pilot-boat dancing on the waves to get
46 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
alongside the statelier brig, whose half-lowered sails wrinkle and flutter in the
wind, awaiting the trustworthy sailor who is to board the vessel as guide. The
swift, racing wash of the water past the group of boats, without any very
violent freshness or stormy motion, is given in a true seamanlike manner by
Mr. M. F. H. De Haas, the artist. Mr. Maurice De Haas, as well as Mr. William
F. De Haas, is a Holland painter, whose merit having attracted the attention
of Mr. Belmont, the Rothschild of America, procured an invitation to visit these
shores, and the promise of a career and a fortune. The Messrs. De Haas are
doing well, and are not likely ever to forsake the country which has given
them so pleasant a reception, and which they have beautified with so many
meritorious works of art.
Marine artists like Mr. E. Moran or Mr. M. De Haas characteristically find
their pleasure in beating about New York Harbor. Day after day, in the fine
summer weather, they may be seen standing, Columbus-like, on the prow of
some vessel (which is more likely to be a grimy steam-tug than anything hand-
somer), engaged in their own peculiar kind of exploration. Their game is
worth the chase, and the booty they collect justifies their taste. Other ardsts,
like Mr. Brown in the picture we engrave on page 13, choose the freezing
winter-time, and the frost-locked mimic sea of Central Park. He has given us
a careful and variously-discriminated crowd, mainly engaged in the noble old
Scotch sport of "Curling." The compatriots of Burns, among the hardest
players and hardest workers of the age, have transported the game to this
country, where it attracts every winter the delighted wonder of the ignorant
and the incapable. As the plaid-wrapped athletes send the heavy balls of
Aberdeen granite vigorously across the ice, or carefully sweep the crystal floor
to a state of frictionless purity for ^ the next effort, or measure the distance
between a couple of stones with noisy and angerless vociferation, they are sure
to have an admiring crowd around them. The curious Yankee, not "native and
indued unto that element," pauses to watch the missiles, with a modest convic-
tion that he could improve them ; the little school-girl, sledding with her
brother, glides slower past the fascinating sports of the good-natured, manly
contestants. It is a crisp, eager, jolly game, imparting to the tame picture of
the city lake a spicy flavor of wild loch-sports in North Britain. This animated
scene, crowded with small faces and figures very difficult to engrave, is one of
pi
<
N
9
FINE ART. 47
the most elaborate attempts of Mr. Brown, whose pencil, though loving rustic
subjects, more generally seeks the softness and refinement of fair child-faces,
and the delights of lovers, whose very whispers it essays to paint.
A sport better understood here is angling — a pleasure as cosmopolitan as
its synonym, coquetry. Mr. W. M. Brackett, in a series one of whose subjects
we represent on page 12, has delineated "The Rise," "The Leap," "The Last
Struggle," and "Landed." Here is the suggestion of country streams, hissing
into foam over the shingly rock, and curling up into peaceful sleep among the
boulders of the shore. The noble captive, his silver mail availing him nothing
in this unequal warfare, writhes and twists his flexible body into a semicircle,
exposing to the air his elegant tail and his panting gills, already half-drowned
in the long race. It is the last effort for liberty; shortly will come the usual
reward of unsuccessful heroes in a lost cause — the martyr's fire, the approval
meted too late to benefit the recipient, and the apotheosis — of the supper-table.
The painter of the last-named picture, Mr. Brackett, hails from Boston, a
metropolis whose art-development has always been the pet puzzle of the painting-
world in America elsewhere. Nobody could tell who took the likenesses of
Bostonians, who painted the landscapes of their surrounding country, who com-
posed their battle-pieces, fruit-pieces, picayune-pieces, and masterpieces. A
rumor got about that the Bostonians, in the moments of leisure they secured
from the study of Emerson, dashed into the picture-shops and bought up all
the Corots and Paul Webers they could find. These names represent two
landscape-painters as opposite in style as anything that can be imagined. It
would seem impossible that one city should be generous enough to contain them
both. Corot, the Frenchman, paints vapory, dreamy, invisible landscapes, that
nobody perhaps can fully understand : by summoning up all your resolution,
coming up to a Corot very fresh, keeping the catalogue-title very distinct in
your mind, and if possible turning the picture upside-down, you think you
distinguish a tree, a fog, a boat, a pond, a bog, and a fisherman. Weber, of
Philadelphia, on the contrary, is the distinctest of painters: everything with him
is frank, fair, obvious painting, honest trees, white clouds and green weeds, in
the style of Lessing. How should the Bostonians love the one and the other?
Yet it has been generally asserted that each Bostonian had a Corot and a
Weber on the two sides of the looking-glass in his "keeping-room." The
48
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Corot was to put him into a state of trance, and tlie Weber to wake liim to
realities of life, after an evening of Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott. Then
it was known that one of Couture's pupils, William M. Hunt, was established
p. Cuameric, Sc.
The Forced Prayer.
in Boston as a portrait-painter, and that the Athenians there, in their ardent
way of elevating every noveltj' into a fresh superstition, had convinced them-
selves that there was no painter in the solar system equal to Hunt. True, he
sent to the Exposition Utiiverselie of 1867 a portrait of Lincoln, so vigorously
so THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
and invidiously dirown into shadow that every Frenchman beholding it came
away convinced that the martyr President was a man of color. True, too, that
though not without eccentricity, Mr. Hunt is an artist of ability. But the Bos-
tonians, epical and self-contained, rarely divulged themselves in art to the outer
world. Mr. Hunt could send his Lincoln to Paris, but he sent nothing to the
Philadelphia exhibitions, and very seldom displayed his work in New York.
Boston landscape, Boston marine, Boston figure-painting, were an Isis-mystery,
probaJ)ly intensely enjoyed by the civic mind, but veiled from all the world
outside. Of late, a little corner of this Isis-curtain has been lifted. It is known
that every Bostonian lately bought, and hung up in his sanctum sanctorum, a
specimen from the auction-sale of young Mr. Longfellow's landscapes- — the poet's
son. It is known that Boston has a Millet. Of course. France has a Millet
— or had — the painter of peasant-groups, so original, so racy of the soil, so
grimy, so similar to a chapter of Thoreau. England, too, has a Millais, pro-
nounced just like the French, and equally the favorite ot a certain inmost
circle of the elect. These postulates being given, it was obvious that Boston
must in the course of time, and that as soon as possible, have a Millet too.
She has got one now, and nothing remains to complete her ambition. Young
Millet is a growing sapling, as yet in the developing stage, but, without joking,
a young man of very decided promise. He sent to the National Academy
Exhibition of 1876, a portrait of a lad, vei-y frank, boyish, direct, and painted
with engaging simplicity and robustness. We very decidedly like his gondel-
licd in colors, entitled "In the Bay of Naples," and copied by us on page 28
from the original in the Centennial show. Who that has ever taken that primi-
tive, antique sail from Naples to Capri in the old market-boat, would not warm
to the picture of it, especially when executed with such freshness and wit? It
is like a revived missing chapter from Pliny the Naturalist; behind our backs
are the phenomena of that great volcano which cost the erudite Roman his
life; before us the two-peaked outline of Capri lifting from the blue, and around
us the peasant-life which has scarcely changed since the days of the ancients.
Four of the mariners in this picture wear the Phrygian cap that Ulysses wore.
They roll their arms and legs into the softest convolutions of the dolce far
nietite. They play with the handsome Anacapri girl on the seat that eternal
game of dalliance and love which is never old. The bare-backed boys, opening
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^5
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FINE ART.
and shutting- their fingers like flashes of tawny Hghting, play the immortal
game of Morra which the Hebrew slaves played beneath the pyramids. So
drifting and floating, and letting the wind take care of the dirty old sail, they
sit with their feet in a bed of fish, and execute that delicious Capri-transit —
the most luxurious bit of vagabondage, set in the loveliest scenery, that even
Italian life affords.
And now that enchanter word "Italian" — most alluring and spell-containing
adjective in the language — has got so fast hold of us that we must fain leave
the Boston corner of American art-development, which we had set about to
elucidate, and sail across forthwith to San Giorgio, at Venice. One word in
parenthesis, however, before we have utterly lost our train of thought, for
another Boston artist, the younger Champney. Two Bostonians, both Champ-
neys, enlivened the American colony in Prance eight years or so ago — Benjamin,
the elder, an old-fashioned landscape-painter, with a soul and heart eternally
young, and a slim youth, J. W. Champney, who in those days lived in a very
small and very lofty room in the Rue du Dauphin, and carried up his own
milk in the morning for a home-made breakfast. Those days of student-liberty
and independent fortune-fighting are over now, and as "Champ," the young
art-adventurer is famous. His illustrations to Mr. King's work on "The Great
South," and his charming Centennial American sketches in a French journal,
have won him admirers in America, England and France, and procured him
compliments in more than one language. He contributes to the Exhibition,
among other things, "Your Good Health!", engraved on page 8. It is one of
the small, single-figure subjects which Meissonier brought into vogue. A cordial
old bachelor, who has seen life, and who wears the full-bottom wig and gaiters
of the last century, is just lifting the glass filled from the tall champagne-bottle
before him ; a smile breaks on his mouth as the bead breaks on the rim.
"Champ" has caught the freshness, the urbanity, the hospitality ot his type'
"and that," as Nym says, "is the humor of it." With which short digression
from the Mediterranean, made in the interest of the modern Athens, we revert
to the enchanted lands, and find ourselves basking on the sunset gold ot the
Adriatic, and gazing at Giffbrd's "San Giorgio." This church, we may recollect,
built when Venice was attempting to reconstruct the Athenian orders of archi-
tecture with more good-will than knowledge, has been contemptuously ridiculed
52 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
by Ruskin, because the architect, in his intellectual vacancy, put a hole in the
pediment where Phidias would have put a grand statue. The building, in faith,
would never attract notice from its classical perfection, if left to honest com-
petition with odier edifices ; but in Venice its situation, with the broad mouth
FINE ART.
53
of the Giudecca to isolate it, makes it one of the most conspicuous buildings
I
you can see. You paddle across in a gondola to where it lies, separated from
the bulk of Venice by a breadth of rippled water, which has been reflectincr
54 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
the triangular pediment of San Giorgio before your eyes ever since you dis-
embarked at the Hotel Danieli ; and as you unload at the flat steps of the
basilica, and proceed inside to see the famous Tintoretto, you feel that this
formal church, peaked out of the water like Teneriffe, is one of the character-
features of Venice, as ill to be spared as the nose on the face. Mr. Gifford
has chosen the sunset-view, when the water around the lonely temple shines
hke chiseled eold. Has he hit the true color of sunset? We are not sure.
We recollect, when the picture was first exhibited in New York, walking past
it with a young French artist, fresh from the atelier of Gerome. He asked
the author's name of "that 'omelette' yonder," and remarked that sunsets were
not bad things in art when they were not "false in tone as the dickens."
"Dickens," as every reader may not know, is diable in French. We defended
the picture, but the disrespect of the careless young intruder has clung to the
work in our mind ever since. If the strictur-e did happen to possess one grain
oT justice, then our engraving, which is one of Mr. Hinshelwood's most lumi-
nous, liquid successes, is a better art-work than its original — a fact which it
would be gratifying enough to believe.
The mention of Sanford Gifford's Venetian subject introduces to our
thoughts the graceful group of Venetian "Water-carriers," painted by a foreign
artist, Wulffaert, whose Belgian birth is suggested by his name, and engraved
for our readers on page 49. The supply of fresh water in the sea-city is none
too abundant, and the custom is for householders to buy the indispensable
crystal, like a gem of price, at the hands of water-carriers, who bear it in
large ketdes through the town. These water-porters are young girls, and form
a race apart. Robust, brown, graceful, and dressed in a traditional costume,
they are among the most picturesque inhabitants of Venice, and, when they
happen to be fair in face, recall the women of Veronese, with their full persons
and liquid, serious, animal eyes. Herr Wulffaert gives us a cluster, as seen
any morning at one of the large wells in the public squares of Venice. In
the backtrround rises the vast brick bell-tower of St. Mark's, and around the
cistern are collected the handsome girls whose ready hands assuage a city's
thirst. One lowers her bucket by its cord into the well-shaft : another empties
the flashing fluid, like a fountain of gems, from one vessel into another; the
youngest, a prettv little creature, watches the doves, which are publicly fed every
FINE ART. 55
day at noon in front of St. Mark's, and which sometimes fly to other pubHc
squares for variety of diet or for a sip of that fresh water which is rather hard
of attainment for them, and for which they are often indebted to the indulgence
of these good-natured water-bearing girls. The picture, besides being true to
nature and without any flattering idealization, is peculiarly graceful in its grouping
and the character of its personages.
At the Academy of Venice, and under the eye of resident Venetian sculp-
tors, Miss Blanche Nevin, the authoress of "Cinderella" (page 16), received
her best technical education. This artist is a sister of the Rev. Dr. Nevin,
whose exertions in buildinsf a handsome church for American Protestants in the
very heart of Rome were so creditable, and so quickly successful upon the
triumph of the present government over the temporal power of the Pope.
The lady is still quite young, but several of her figures in marble have been
successful, as witness her "Maud Muller," and a subject owned by Mrs. Ste-
phens, the society queen. "Cinderella" sits with an air of discouragement
among the ashes, in pose as if the Dying Gladiator had shrunk back into
infancy and femininity. Dreams of the splendors and delights into which her
luckier sisters have been admitted occupy her little head, while her own future
seems as dry and cheerless as the faded embers. Cheer up, small Marchioness!
In a moment the fairy godmother will appear, and you will escape from your
marble and be a belle, and your tiny Parian foot shall be shod in glass, and
the pumpkin shall roll with you and the rats shall gallop with you, and the
Prince shall kiss your little mouth into warmth and color. The creator of this
^'^to^.ging figure, who some two years back de-Latinized herself and exchanged
the shores of Latium for the streets of Philadelphia, is one of the most prom-
ising of the rising school of lady sculptors.
Miss Nevin finished her "Maud Muller" in the atelier of another Phila-
delphia artist, the well-known and highly-successful Joseph A. Bailly, whose
"Aurora" we copy on page 6. Mr. Bailly exhibits, besides this ideal figure,
which rises so white and mist-like in the middle ot the great American gallery
of paintings in Memorial Hall, a portrait work of ponderous importance, the
likeness of President Blanco, of Venezuela, recently set up in bronze at Caracas.
Mr. Bailly, as a young Paris revolutionist exiled by the events of 1848, went
over to England, where he wrought for awhile in the studio of his namesake.
56
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, iSj6.
Edward Hodges Bailly, author of "Eve at the Fountain." Coming to this
country, he attracted immediate attention by the skill with which he could carve
Huth.
and "undercut"" the most intricate designs, and gradually rose to success as a
sculptor of portrait and classical subjects. P'rom the corner of .Sixth and Chest-
FINE ART.
57
F. Feyen-Perrin. Pinx.
Melancholy »
nut streets, in this city, three of Mr. Bailly's works may be seen at once — the
Washington in front of Independence Hall, the Franklin on the corner of the
58 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Ledger building, and the fine horses supporting the escutcheon on the Sixth
street facade of tlie same edifice. The technical ability of this prolific artist is
especially shown in all that relates to the mechanical portion of his art. His
modeling in the clay of ponderous and elaborate subjects, with assured touch
and upon a well-calculated skeleton or frame, is so quick and imperative as to
seem like magic to less skilled practitioners. His labors for the republic of
Venezuela consisted in the colossal equestrian figure now exhibited, and a
standing statue of still larger scale. The standing figure was modeled, and the
equestrian one twice repeated, in the space of four months, to be in readiness
for a special anniversar)'. It is not likely that any other artist in the country
would have accepted and fulfilled the commission for such a piece of time-
work. The "Aurora," likewise, is a piece of magic; the equilibrium of the
figure, whose feet are folded far above the ground, and who rises just over
the trailing folds of a vail which merely sweeps the earth, is a powerful stimu-
lant of our wonder. To have made such a device in bronze would be easy;
but to carve it out of marble, when a false blow of the hammer would lay the
beautiful image low at once, seems more than human skill could accomplish.
Then the transporting of the critically-balanced figure in safety was a remark-
able event, only to be brought about by a mechanical genius as conspicuous
as the artistic. But Mr. Bailly has passed through the apprenticeship of every
art that mechanics includes ; and his marble vails and flowers and figure, light
and perfect as a blossom on the stem, have successfully removed — half standing,
half overhanging — from the studio to the destined position in the far-away Park
edifice. The image is like a crystallized mist from daybreak: "Aurora," only
half disengaged from the Night, whose vail sweeps lingeringly from her fore-
head to the ground, holds and scatters upon the earth those blossoms whose
petals are opened by the winds of morning, and whose blushes are copied from
the blushes of the dawn. Such an evanescent idea ought to be sculptured in
mist; but Mr. Bailly is able to give a mist-like tenuity to marble.
An instructive comparison of the overcoming the technical difficulties of
sculpture may be made by looking first at Mr. Bailly's lighdy-poised figure, and
then at some of the sculptures which Italy has sent over with a lavish hand to
the Centennial Exhibition. However these statues may disappoint the lovers
of classicality and repose, there is no question that in overcoming the stub-
FINE ART. ^Q
bornness of material, they teach many a valuable lesson to our chiselers. We
would indicate, as special examples of the triumph over this kind of difficultv,
the hair in Caroni's "Africaine" (page 40), and the dressing-robe in the same
artist's "Telegram of Love" (page 32). These works, though completely dis-
severed from the Greek theory of sculpture, have a rich, pictorial, and as it
were, colored quality of their own which justifies the theory on which they are
carved. If the success in representing texture were attained by an uncommon
and worthless degree of mere ^m's/i, it would not be commendable; but exami-
nation will convince us that it is not the difficulty or the patience, but the live
flash and expressiveness of the touch that gives the effect. The flowered silk
of the dressing-gown in "The Telegram" gives no evidence of excessive diffi-
culty overcome: it is its felicitous invention which strikes us. The heavy
crisped tresses of the "Africaine" are no more closely finished than the
smoothest locks and bands of hair sculptured by Chantrey or VVestmacott; but
the sculptor, putting a brain into his chisel, has set it to thinking, and invented
for his woolly convolutions a glancing, sketchy touch as expressive as the
brushing of Reynolds on canvas. The Italian cleverness, as a mechanical and
inventive development of resources, is well worth studying. Signor Caroni has
chosen subjects well adapted to show off his rich and glittering style. In the
"Africaine" we have the heroine of Meyerbeer's opera, the black Afric queen
whose dusky soul was illumined with the light of tenderness at the visit of
Vasco de Gama. For these primitive intelligences love is the apple of know-
ledge; when it is once bitten, the nature is changed, the Eden is spoiled, the
contentment is lost, and the whole soul is thrown Into the passion of desire,
for bliss or for despair. In Signor Caroni's picturesque work we have the
uncultured queen tortured by the pangs of a bootless passion, her supple body
thrown broodingly beside the couch where her hero dreams of another, and
watching with jealous eyes the lips that murmur of her rival. In his "Telegram
of Love" we are amused with a lighter and more hopeful subject: this radiant
maiden, who confides to the neck of her dove the flutterine message which
will lead to a rendezvous or an answer, is tortured by no doubt, crushed by
no despondency. We can imagine the haste and tumult of her telegraphy, a
tumult indicated by her alert, moving figure ; we can see the hurry with which
she has sprung from her morning dreams, the hair hastily knotted, the peignoir
6o
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
quickly thrown on, and the bird briskly dismissed from the cottage steps, with
a last loving, brooding bend of the head over its faithful wings. For so large
FINE ART.
6i
a statue this figure has an astonishing lightness and bewitchment. The stooping
posture is a bold, daring contradiction of the rules arranged by the martinets
of art. It is all grace, spontaneity, sweetness, and pastoral charm. Its technical
y. C. Forbes, Putx.
Beware I
y. Rca. Eng,
merits disappear under the gracious elegance of the conception. From "The
Telegram" to Selika, the "Africaine," there is a gulf of transition, but the maid
of "The Telegram," lovely as she is, is eclipsed by the strange tropical inten-
62 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
sity of the "Selika." Equal in the technical part of the carver's art, there is
no comparison in the lofty scope of the subject.
A replica, reduced in size, represents in this gallery the celebrated "Reading
Girl" of Pietro Magni, of Milan. This work, which was one of the charms of
the London Exhibition of 1862 (see page xlv of our "Historical Introduction"),
loses litde by being accommodated to a more portable scale. It is seen in the
Annex, close to the exquisite figure of a girl nursing a sick kitten, by Vela,
the famous sculptor of "Napoleon Dying." Not unfit to stand beside these
delicate renderings of child-sentiment is "The Litde Samaritan" (page 24), a
marble poem by one of our American sculptors, J. S. Hartley. We have here
a pretty maid of ten years, who, carrying the drink of the harvesters through
the sunny field, has tempted a bird to taste it, as she stands silent and curi-
ously watchful, with the cup in her extended hand. Is it water pure? Is it
something stronger, such as harvesters love to taste behind the hedge? We
do not know. The bird, shaking its wise, saucy litde head with an air of
doubt on the rim of the cup, shall decide for us. But of all the skillful repre-
sentadons of child-feeling in marble, in which the present Exhibidon is so
remarkably rich, it is probable that "The Forced Prayer" (page 48), by Pietro
Guarnerio of Milan, bears off the votes of the greatest number of spectators.
It is an epigram in sculpture, and it is epigrammatic sculpture carried to the
limits of the permissible. This telling little figure has received a medal. It is
easier to understand the subject from our spirited engraving than to construct
it in the mind from a description. The handsome litde rebel is standing in
his shirt, sleepy and ready for bed, but denied the blessings of repose until
the customary paternoster is gone through with. Conscious that there will be
no rest for him until the ordeal is over, he begins to mumble the holy words
with frankest hatred, throwing himself into the prescribed atdtude of supplica-
tion like a trick-dog into his positions, with a skill derived from long pracdce
rather than from feeling, while the implied devotion of the routine is belied by
every line of his face, and from his piously lowered eye escapes the tear of
temper and not of contriuon. Of half-a-score varied works by Signor Guar-
nerio, this one probably has the most friends.
These exquisite trifles seem, however, but bijoux, and their manufacture
but bijoulefie or jewelers' work, in comparison with the ponderous "Andetam
at!5*"U-*»>
;^;;
■~m--
*#
#?
Ub
-ginf--
S 1, s)?
.5 f.
s.. r
"fi^r,
x^i__^«SS^ife"
i^sl
THE AMERICAN SOLEIEPv.
mU I U' O. -Fii.-01=i 1
FINE ART. 63
Soldier," in granite, of which we give a steel engraving. Like the nation he
defends, this colossus is in the bloom of youth, and like it he is hard and firm
though alert. What art has succeeded in making this monster out of granite.''
He is twenty-one feet six inches in height. What sempster, working with
needles of thrice-hardened steel, has draped him in those folds of adamant,
that hang ten feet or farther from his inflexible loins ? The sculptors of ancient
Egypt, who had their colossi in granite also, worked for years with their
bronze points and their corundum-dust to achieve their enormous figures, while
the makers of this titanic image, availing themselves of the appliances of
American skill, have needed but a few months to change the shapeless mass
of stone into an idea. Something rocky, rude and large-grained is obvious
still in this stalwart American; his head, with its masculine chin and moustache
of barbaric proportions, is rather like the Vatican " Dacian" than like the
Vatican "Genius." But, whatever may be thought of the artistic delicacy of
the model, Mr. Conrads' "Soldier" presents the image of a sentinel not to be
trifled with, as he leans with both hands clasped around his gun-barrel, the
cape of his overcoat thrown back to free his arm, and the sharp bayonet thrust
into its sheath at his belt. Rabelais' hero, Pantagruel, whose opponents were
giants in armor of granite, would have recoiled before our colossus of Antietam,
because his heart is of granite too.
The American heroes who have really succeeded in conquering the stub-
bornness of this mossy stone, and making it bend before them into the
desired shape by the power of ingenious machinery, are the New England
Granite Company, of Hartford. Before their wonderful ingenuity the rock
seems to lose its obstinacy; and, furnish them but an artistic model, they will
translate its delicacy into the most imperishable stone.
What Mr. Conrads gives us in granite, Mr. George W. Maynard gives us
— page 29, "1776" — on canvas. It is the same inflexibility, the same courage,
the same mature will in stripling body; only in Maynard's revolutionary hero
these qualities are aggressive, while in Conrads' defender of the Union they
are conservative. The figure in Mr. Maynard's "1776" is one of the "embattled
farmers," a homespun patriot, bearing the standard that represented our Union
before we had a flag — the pine-tree banner of Massachusetts, used as a
device in the first batdes of the Revoludon, before the stars and stripes
64
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
were invented,
the very
In his other hand he grasps the ancient musket — perhaps
"Old queen's arm, that Gran'lher Young
Fetched back from Concord — busted."
On the wall behind him is seen a placard, with fragments of the date, '76,
and of the words
"Union" and "In-
dependence." This
manly figure, in the
picturesque "Con-
tinental" unitorm,
so rich in angles,
gables, lappels, and
revers, who crosses
his gun-barrel over
the standard he
will only yield with
his life, looks as
sacred as a cru-
sader. In his face
of grief and valor
we see the rankling
.■■•P=S!?5s"^*--
wrong, the press
y. Gibion, Sc.
I'enus.
the
ure of fate, that
were the birth-
throes of our na-
tion. It is a face
fit for a philoso-
pher, transformed
streets of our cities. There is nothing else like them in the world. Com-
pared with the American soldier's face, as defined from the testimony of all
our artists and the ver)' photographs of our officers, the faces of soldiers over
the rest of the world are those of undeveloped intelligences ; the Greek con-
testants of the Parthenon frieze are but large babies; the English soldiers of
by events into that
of a warrior.
And this obser-
vation leads us to
interject the ques-
tion whether any
country ever yet
begot a national
type of face appa-
rently able to do
so much thinking
and philosophizing
as the American
when at its best.
The problem is
whether the world
yields an amount
of thinkingf suf-
cient to equip the
deep, brain-worn
visages we see in
all our national pic-
tures, or in real
life in the business
66 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Hoo-arth's "March to Finchley" are good-natured, immature, beef-eating lads;
the French soldiers of Vernet are dried out of all individuality — a tinder-box
and a spark — a lean cheek and a glowing eye — tood for powder, and then
nothingness. But our ordinary American phiz has a look of capability, of
knowingness, and when handsome of intellectual majesty, that it would take a
vast deal of actual achievement to justify us in wearing. It is walking about
under false colors to adopt such faces unless we are really the philosophers,
tacticians and diplomats of the age !
Turn we to George Becker, of Paris, whose "Rizpah" is probably the most
impressive picture in the Exhibition. One fancies this work to emerge from
some gloomy studio, whose tenant is aged, tall, morose, and poetical. On the
contrary, little George Becker is one of the least terrific and most likable of
dwarfish youths, a mild butt for the raillery of his taller chums among the
pupils of Gerome. Amid the paint-shops and costume-markets of the Latin
Quarter is to be seen often a small fresh-faced figure, with a good aquiline
profile overshadowed by an immensely tali and glossy hat: in the hand an
artist's box of colors, which is of a size almost to drag upon the ground, and
which conceals a large proportion of the person of the walker, as he spreads
his short compasses to their utmost distention in getting briskly over the ground.
It is Becker. "Come back with )our color-box or in it," says the studio friend
from whom he parts, alluding to the .Spartan and his shield. He takes all
jests with a quiet, good-natured smile, and goes home to paint tragedy. We
recollect walking with him to the funeral of the painter Ingres, and the dififi-
culty of keeping "down" with him, as he stepped with mincing tread among
the mourners. It was snowing, and he asked a group who paused on the
pavement near the church, "Shall we not seek a porte-cochere?" — while the
attendants, opining that the flakes would have uncommon difificulty in finding
him out, laughed at his anxiety even among the solemnities of the occasion.
Such is the pleasant little lad, always mild, neat and conciliating, who goes into
his studio, seizes his enormous brushes, and turns out for us the almost
Michael-Angelesque composition of "Rizpah." .\h! in the presence of so
impressive a work we scarcely think of the physical means by which it was
created. We think of the idea alone, the terrible ordeal of constancy and
maternity. Our engraving on page 2>2) gives a vivid conception of Mr. Becker's
FINE ART. 67
subject, though the imagination has to expand the cut to the size of nature, on
which scale the original is painted, to get the full vigor of the tragedy.
The seven sons of Saul, whoni David delivered to the Gibeonites to be
hanged to avert the famine, are seen suspended from a lofty gibbet, in the
evening of a stormy day. It is the commencement of their exposure, "the
beginning of the harvest," and Rizpah has just initiated her gloomy watch
against the eagles, which come sailing toward the corpses from afar. Over her
head hang the fair young bodies of her sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and
the rest. She is a strong Jewish heroine, a worthy mate for the giant Saul,
and her posture while she fights the mighty bird with her club is statuesque
and grand. As she throws up one massive arm as a fence between the
aggressor and her dead, and looks into the eagle's eye with a glance in which
grief is temporarily merged in horror and repulsion, we seem to hear the
hoarse, desolate cry which escapes from her parched mouth to scare the fam-
ished creature from his prey. The attitudes of the dead youths are supine,
with a languid and oriental grace even in death, and the curled Assyrian beards
of the older ones contrast with the pitiful boyishness of the rest, while the
whole row of princes, tender, elegant and helpless, forms the strongest contra-
diction to the direct, rigid, and as it were virile force of the woman. Another
painter might have chosen the misery, the desolation of Rizpah's vigil for his
theme. But this artist sees, in the whole long tragedy, the peculiar feature
that it was ejfective. Rizpah succeeded in defending the relics ot her family;
the incessant watch, by night as well as by day, from the beginning of barley
harvest until the rainy season, was grand because it was unrelaxed and vigilant.
Mr. Becker therefore, by sinking the mother's grief in her fierceness and energy,
has developed the real sentimental force of the situation ; any quiet treatment
would have lost it. He has delineated for us the first grand example in history
of maternal devotion, the Mater Dolorosa ot the Old Testament, in lines and
colors that leave an unfading impression.
A painting that commemorated a most touching incident, while it formed
on its production an epoch in historical painting, is West's "Death ot Wolfe."
Many spectators may have neglected this picture for more showy rivals. Dark-
ened, overshadowed and of no great size, it makes small effect among the fresh
and garish productions of the British School, where it is hung. Benjamin West,
68
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
when he painted it, was at the height of his friendly rivalry with Reynolds.
Reynolds was inaccessible in portrait, but in history West was able to read a
lesson to Reynolds. Dunlap, in his "History of the Arts of Design," tells the
Mistresi Dorothy.
incident which made this picture a milestone in art-development. Up to this
period, the exceedingly feeble efforts of England in "high art" had leaned entirely
to the classical: the statues of her warriors had been draped as Romans or
FINE ART.
69
Greeks, and the few battle-pictures that had been produced were treated in a
lialf-symbolic or representative manner, with a pseudo-classical endeavor to
Ahna Tadema I'inx.
The Convalescent.
make their heroes look like the heroes of Plutarch and Xenophon. A modern
musket, a modern cap, the uniform of the day, was considered *'low art," and
70 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
left to caricaturists like Hogarth. In the height of this false classicality of the
"Augustan age," West ventured to represent one ot England's best-loved
heroes, a young and intellectual enthusiast excessively dear to the nation's
heart, falling exactly as he fell on the heights near Quebec, with the surround-
ings and equipments treated as nearly as possible in literal fidelity. It was an
innovation, meant for what we now call realism. Reynolds was alarmed; Fuseli
was alarmed; the amiable and genial President of the Royal Academy, who
would have been delighted with the vigor of West's sketch if only he had
clothed his hero in a helmet and cuirass, dissuaded him for a whole hour from
introducing the novelty. When he went away he exclaimed that West, if
the thinsf "took," was revolutionizing the art of Eng-land. The pood sense of
the nation went over to the side of the sensible painter, and this picture, to
us so dark and dim, was the radiant success and sensation of the day. But
for West's intelligertce, it is hard to tell how much longer the absurd and
hollow classicality of the period would. have lasted; we might have had tor an
indefinitely longer term red-faced Englishmen draped as Grecian heroes in
hundreds of pictures, and English verses attempting the false antique in dramas
like Johnson's "Irene." In France, as we know, the Roman taste endured in
art to a considerably later date. When David wished to represent the wives
and mothers of France correcting the discords between the Girondists and the
Jacobins, he painted Romulus and Tatius reconciled b)' the women of the
Sabines; and Guerin, desiring to show the Emigrants of the Revolution return-
ing to their bereaved homes, invented a "Marcus Sextus" to tell the story.
But English art, set in the right path by West, was forever content, after the
production of this picture, to leave the eloquence of facts to produce their
natural effect; and accordingly, when our own great wars came to be recorded,
a pupil of West — Trumbull — was empowered by a wise education to represent
them as they happened, and in the strictest historic sense.
West's "Death of Wolfe," of which we present a copy on page 53, is a
touching and solemn composition. On the ground, near the crest of Abra-
ham's Heights, the young hero is dying in the arms of his friends, at the
moment of victory. The defences of Quebec are taken, Montcalm's forces are
in full retreat, and the chain of French strongholds will not much longer bar
the advance of Antrlo-Sa-xon civilization across the American wilderness. But
FINE ART. 71
this consciousness is only just dawning on the expiring hero. It is the thick
of the battle. i\s young Wolfe sinks down with his death-wound, with the
issue still uncertain around him, an officer cries, "They fly! I protest they fly!"
''Who fly?" asks Wolfe with terrible anxiety, through the death-ratde. ''The
French" is the reply, and the young chieftain, raising his eyes to heaven as
West has drawn him, gasps out, "Then I die happy!" and expires. Around
him kneel the English captains bare-headed ; the brave young colonists, our
forefathers, who supplied the flower of the British forces, in fringed leggings
and moccasins are looking wistfully on ; one of them has just run up with the
news of the French retreat; and, pointing to the captured flag, with its Bourbon
lilies, this American rustic gives Wolfe the news of his success — a form of
apprisal that we somehow like better than if it had come from lips stranger
to the soil. More completely indigenous, a red-skin brave, one of the few whom
British diplomacy was able to win from the wily blandishments of the French,
sadly crouches on the ground to count the last breaths of the expiring martyr.
Wolfe's figure is young, slender and aristocratic ; the pale, upturned face is
such an one as might well belong to the literary hero who beguiled the journey
of the night attack a few hours before by reciting Gray's "Elegy," with the
remark that he would rather have written that perfect requiem than take
Quebec. This charming saying, so full of college-boy enthusiasm, gives reality
to the character of Wolfe in our minds; the measures of the stately Elegy
close around him for his own proper epitaph and consecration, and throb, as
a dead march, among the bowed military figures whom West groups in his
picture.
The epoch (as defined by costume) of the bewitching "Mistress Dorothy"
(page 68) is that of the "Death of Wolfe." We are again at the period, so
big with changes for the face of the world, when England covered herself with
victory, and made herself the dictator of Europe, to be brought up with a
sudden check as soon as she tried to extend her conquests to the Western
hemisphere. Yes, here is the costume that Gainsborough and Northcote and
Romney immortalized ; but from the scene of the dying Wolfe and scattering
French, what a transition! It is like changing our reading from Marlborough's
Dispatches to the beautiful make-believe antique English of Thackeray's
"Esmond." The epoch, the period, is there, but we shift from grim work to
72
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
play. "Mistress Dorothy" is a lovely, simple English girl, of the time when
Anglo-Saxon simplicity was real simplicity, uncontaminated with superficial
science and French novels. This round-faced maid, who sits waiting for her
eyes has never
been crossed
by ugly shad-
ows of skep-
ticism and
speculation.
Doubtless she
has sins of her
own to ac-
count for, and
to ask expia-
tion from, as
she humbly
kneels at her
dimity pillow
by night; but
the sins of the
bluff Hano-
verian period
have a certain
innocence
about them ;
one can see
that the hero-
ines of Miss
Burney's nov-
els have never
palfrey to be
brought mean-
while drawing
on a pair of
gloves that
Jugla and Al-
exandre would
declare to be
of frightfully
bad cut, pos-
sesses a mind
healthfully va-
cant of "Con-
suelo" and
"The Prin-
cess." She
knows the af-
fairs of the
buttery, doubt-
less, and every
day counts the
esfgs of her
A. TantJrdmi, Sculp.
The Bather.
father the
Squire's poul-
tr}'-yard. The
crystal pellu-
cidity of her
let their teeth quite meet in the apple of knowledge. Now-a-days we should
have to dive very deep into the country wilderness to meet such a gem of
simplicity. Ah ! we travel a thousand miles for a wife, and think nothing of
it; if we could defeat time as easily as space, and plunge into distant epochs
FINE ART.
73
R. Leli^nnn, Pinx.
La Rota — the Foimdling Hospital at Rome,
74 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
for our mates, what a hurry-scurry there would be to get the first choice !
Swinburne the poet would make for Cleopatra ; Faust the printer would call
for Helen of Troy ; Longfellow would pursue his Evangeline, and Tennyson
a protracted " Dream" of fair women, while we for our part should be con-
tented with the dewy rustic buxomness of " Mistress Dorothy." For this sane
and beautiful creation we have to thank Mr. George A. Storey, a talented
London artist who has not received the honor of an election to the Academy,
but who in this picture and in another entitled "Only a Rabbit" displays quali-
ties that make the highest honors seem not inappropriate.
A really exalted sentiment ot rural tranquillity is poured over Mr.
Bellows's scene entitled "Sunday in Devonshire" (page 44). It is the vibration
of the church-going bell expressed in landscape-painting. We seem to see and
breathe a different atmosphere from the work-a-day air as we mingle with these
smock-frocked peasants on their way from church, appearing to have just
received the blessing of Sir Roger de Coverley. Mr. Bellows is a young
American painter who has passed much time in England, and whose works,
both in oil and water-color, take an inspiration from English art rather than
from that of the Continent. The spirit of English landscape, too, whose nutty
honest flavor he seizes so perfectly, is a boon he has secured from a residence
in the tight little island. It is not for him to soar into Colorado scenery or
wrestle with the Yo Semite. The stage he loves is set with snug and crisp
trees and happy cottages; sometimes he is familiar, and gives a kitchen-garden
comedy lor the benefit of Gaffer and Gammer; but when he is at his best, as
in the present example, the limpid, translucent touches of his pencil transfer
the very sentiment of "an English home," with the security, the hereditary
calm, the
" Dewy landscape, dewy trees.
Softer than sleep; all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace."
We have already described and illustrated the wondrous archaeology of
Mr. Alma Tadema ; but we are sure our readers will readily forgive us for
recurring to a painter of such marked originality. On page 69 we present an
engraving of his gem-like picture entitled "The Convalescent." The original
is not large, and reminds us strangely of some mosaic just dug up from
FINE ART. 75
Pompeii — as highly finished as the celebrated "Pliny's Doves," and as dramatic
as the "Choragus instructing his Actors." We are transported, by the magic
art of this wizard painter, into the times of the later emperors, when rococo
had completely usurped the simplicity and ponderousness of early Roman taste,
when the arts of conquered Greece had rendered the Italians finical without
rendering them elegant, and when even the false Egyptian and false Hellenic
of Adrian had been forgotten, and the (jrandiose had sunk into the trivial
throughout all the mansions ot Rome. The museums of Europe, the lavas of
Herculaneum, and the fragmentary busts of the statue-galleries, have to be
ransacked, for costumes, hints, habits and back-grounds, before such a group
as "The Convalescent" can be constructed, so true to life in the first century.
Amid the worst innovations of Pompeian taste- — the bewigged toilets, the pillars
painted part way up and merging into pilasters, the garments chequered with
a confusion of colors, the household divinities made absurd with barber's-block
frivolity — he places his group of the invalid dame and her attendants. He
knows well that the imagination is more easily caught with the every-day litter
and vulgar ugliness of a period of decline than with the frigid perfection of
the more elegant epochs. The graceful figures of an Attic vase would touch
us but slightly, and nothing would come of an effort to interest the mind with
the Grecian couches and reclining nymphs of the classical period as the French
restored them in the day of the Revolution. Our artist's persons are direct,
real, ungraceful, and convincing. The noble dame lounges on her carved seat.
Her hair is bunched up into a hideous mop, which gives her infinite satisfac-
tion. Her accomplished slave has dipped her hand into the round box of
parchments, and has extracted some of the light literature of the day — not that
story in Virgil which made an empress faint, but the love-poems of Ovid or
the graceful fancies of Catullus. A younger slave-woman kneels in the fore-
ground over a tempting luncheon. It is homely and stately at once. It is
parlor-life in the days when they talked Latin without making it a school-
exercise, and perhaps, in some cool corner around the pillar, Pliny is writing
one of his pleasant letters.
Christian resignation, which soothes the bed of sickness, and finds an
answer even for the yawning challenge of the grave, is most poetically illus-
trated by the British artist F. Holl, in his two subjects contributed to the
76
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Exhibition. One is entitled "The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away;
'^' 'f^^^^J >^J '^ ""-^'^
blessed be the name of the Lord;" the other, "The Village Funeral: 'I am
the Resurrection and the Life." " The former, lent by its owner, F. C. Pawle,
FINE ART.
77
Esq., forms the theme of our engraving on this page : it seems to attain the
very acme of rehgious pathos. We share in the first meal which unites an
humble family after some awful bereavement. The watchers who have taken
their turns at the sick couch are released now— their faithful task is over ; the
78 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
household whose regular ways have been overturned by the malady has come
back to its wonted course again, and the pious nurses have no cares to prevent
them from meeting at the board as of old. Is there anything more dreadful
than that first meal after a funeral? The mockery of leisure and ease — the
sorrowful, decorous regularity of the repast — the security from those hindrances
and interruptions that so long have marred the order of the attendance — these
improvements are here indeed, for what they are worth; but where is the
tender hand that was wont to break the bread for the household ? — where are
the lips that used to breathe forth the humble grace before meat? It is the
very emptiness of a once cheerful form — the bitterness of meat eaten with
tears. The frugal board is neat and pleasant —
" But oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"
In Mr. Holl's picture we see this ghastly, unnatural decorum of the table
spread with funeral bakemeats : the wan woman beside it, whose hollow eyes
and tear-worn cheeks tell of faithful watching for many a weary night, is neat
with the miserable neatness of the funeral evening; the young brother in the
back-ground is brushed and combed more than his wont, and his attitude has
an unnatural restraint; the old woman behind is tender and sympathetic, beyond
the customary usage and practice of that kind of old women. Death has come
among them all like a leveling wind, reducing everything to the regularity of
desolation. Out of this weary scene of frustration and lassitude arise the words
of the sincere-looking earnest youne curate: "The Lord eave, the Lord hath
taken away;" he stands by the robbed fireside; he joins the family-circle
whose most precious link is gone, and he confidendy cries, "Blessed be the
name of the Lord!" It is the very triumph of faith out of the jaws of death!
Mr. HoU has uttered that sure word of promise which is the best reliance of
our religion. In the assurance of the immortalit)' which is to join the family
at last in a more-enduring mansion, is the highest boon of Christianity. The
expressions here are so eartiest, pure, devout, and full of tenderness, that the
painting is as elegant as a canto of In Memoriam. It is deservedly a great
favorite, and forms a precious example of the intellectual and moral profundity
which is the redeeminsr feature of English art.
fi.
#-.. -
>^^*^^
AMERICA-,
!lijTimtionalf;xtti"hiti.on 1876.
FINE ART. 79
A work of considerable dignity and elegance, and one deserving respectful
criticism apart from the mere stupefied admiration accorded to its gigantic
size, is the colossal group of sculpture entitled "America," set up in the great
Central Hall of the Memorial Building. Besides beiny; an interestine reminder
of a superb monument, it is noteworthy as probably the largest ceramic work
ever made, except those Chinese towers confessedly put together out of small
fragments. However many may be the segments in which the "America"
group is cast, they must severally be enormously large, and in their grouping
they produce an effect of perfect unity, so adroitly are their joints concealed.
The memorial recently erected to Prince Albert, in Hyde Park, London, has
occupied the leading sculptors of England for many years. The podium or
central mass, covered by Mr. Armstead with friezes of the principal poets,
artists, and musicians, is approached by flights of steps on its four sides, the
whole forming a vast platform, at whose corners are pedestals, quite remote
from the central edifice, and respectively crowned with groups of sculpture.
"Asia" is one of these groups, executed by J. H. Foley; the late P. Macdowell
designed the group of "Europe;" the veteran John Bell, whose works, says
Mr. S. C. Hall, "have long given him a leading position in his profession," is
the inventor of the elaborate allegory dedicated to our own country, a fine
engraving of which we introduced in an earlier part of the present work. The
quarters of the globe are backed by other groups of sculpture representing
human achievement: as, "Agriculture," by W. C. Marshall; ".Engineering," by
J. Lawlor; "Commerce," by J. Thornycroft, and "Manufactures," by H. Weekes.
The collection of figures representing "America," which are worthy the
attention needed to unravel their symbolism, may be thus described. America
herself the central and all-embracing type of the continent, rides the bison in
the centre of the cortege. Her right hand holds the spear, her left the shield,
decorated with the beaver, the eagfle and other Indian sicjns ; her tiara of eaele
feathers sweeps backward from her forehead and trails over her shoulders; she
is the aboriginal earth-goddess, depending upon kindlier forces to illumine her
path and guide her steps. This office is assumed by the figure representing
the United States ; the serene virgin, self-confident and austere, wearing the
lineaments of the Spirit of Liberty, belted with stars, and leading the earth-
goddess with a sceptre on whose tip shines that planet of empire which
8o
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
"westward takes its way," is the effigy of our own happy country. At her
feet Hes the Indian's quiver, with but one or two arrows left within it. Behind
the figure of the Repubhc is that of Canada, a pure and fresh-faced damsel,
wearing furs, and pressing the rose of England to her bosom. The figure
seated on a rock, in
front, is Mexico, rep-
resented by an Az-
tec in his radiating
crown of feathers,
with the fiint axe,
curiously carved, in
his hand ; a corres-
ponding sitting per-
sonaee on the other
side, and not within
the scope of the
engraving, is South
America, a Spanish-
faced cavalier in the
broad-brimmed som-
brero and orace-
fully folded poncho.
These are the prin-
cipal features of the
lofty and elaborate
group which casts
its shadow over the
floor of Memorial
sculpture ty Si£yior Corti.
Lucifer.
worked in such evi-
dent sympathy with
. and admiration for
the Spirit of Ameri-
can institutions that
he deserves the most
gracious recognition
of this country; the
original of this
mighty group, be-
held by all who pass
under the marble
arch and stroll to-
wards the Serpent-
ine, is a perpetual
appeal for Constitu-
tional Liberty, as we
understand it; and
the lesson taught by
those sister statues,
who though crown-
less subdue the
rugged forces of the
West, is not lost
upon the thronging
Hall. The artist has
cidzens who gaze upon them. The effect of the group as we have it, in the
pleasant earth-color of Messrs. Doulton's terra-cotta, is quite unique — something
more exquisite and piquant than that of white marble, with which the eye
becomes satiated after a long course of civic monuments.
English rustic life is well-depicted in Constable's painting of "The Lock"
FINE ART.
8i
(page i"]), which is a piece of good fortune for us to i-:eep for awhile in
America. The importance of John Constable's influence and example cannot
possibly be over-estimated in the progress of landscape art throughout Eno-land
SculptUfe by Bi^idio Pozz
The Youth of Michael Angela.
and the Continent. His effect on art is in fact considerably greater than that
of Turner, because, while Turner's individuality cannot be imitated to any
.1. Sri^r:,:^
ing in the Corn.
84 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
advantage, the discoveries of Constable are not altogether uncopiable. He was
born at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, in 1776, and died at his home in Charlotte
Street, London, on the first of April, 1837, with Southey's "Covvper," which he
had been reading an hour before his death, lying at the bed-head on a table.
Constable found landscape composition enthralled in the noble formality of
Gainsborough and Wilson; by paying attention to nature, and not to any
school, he invented a manner of his own, expressed certain phases as they had
never been expressed before, and left behind him a body of works which were
the code of a new faith in art. The mannered landscapes of his predecessor,
Wilson, in England, have just the same relation to real scenery that the man-
nered descriptions of Pope and Shenstone have to actual effects ; it is landscape
gardening, not landscape; you are among groves that "frown," and "horrid"
rocks, and "nodding" mountains, and all those other curiosities that are never
found in nature by those who really love her, but are invariably lent to her
by artists of the drop-curtain sort; at the same time, on the Continent, the
grand but baleful influence of Poussin had set all the world to formalizing
nature, and that of Claude had established his precedent of artful symmetry
among those who could never reach his golden air. It was for Constable to
charm away the whole world from the shrines of these divinities, and they are
empty to this very day. His fresh and flashing style, so true to a single aspect
of European climate, set every painter to looking, not upon antique bas-reliefs
and Italian ruins, but right into the open, windy, showery, capricious sky, and
among the dewy grasses underfoot. He made the lush and humid leaves
twinkle with sense of growth and stirring life and mounting sap. He sent the
scudding clouds flashing and darkening across die changeable sky; he swept
this sky with rocking branches and tufted ripples of foliage. Although not
altogether unappreciated during his lifetime, his fame has immensely increased
since his death; along with "Old Crome" and Bonington, he enjoys a sort of
posthumous elevation to the peerage ; his slightest works are sought out like
gold, and even the gallery of die Louvre, so very chary of credit to English
art, has recendy received with pride two or three of his pictures — one of them
a very noble study of a sea-beach swept with shadows from a storm — and hung
them in positions of honor. He is the true progenitor of such eminent land-
scapists as Troyon, Rousseau, Frangais, Dupre, and even Daubigny — some of
FINE ART 85
whom find their fortune in appropriating a mere corner of his mantle. "Among
all landscape-painters, ancient or modern," says the celebrated C. R. Leslie, "no
one carries me so entirely to nature ; and I can truly say that since I have
known his works I have never looked at a tree or the sky without being
reminded of him." In his personal character Constable was winning, and con-
quered the most unpromising material to his allegiance ; he would say to a
London cabby,. "Now, my good fellow, drive me a shilling fare towards so and
so, and don't cheat yourself" Constable's picture at the Exposition, generously
lent by the Royal Academy, is an important example. One of his flashing skies,
summing up the whole quarrel between storm and sunshine, occupies the
upper half; against this lean a couple of vigorous, riotous-looking trees, half-
drunk with potations of superabundant English moisture. Both these features
are modelled: the sky shows as much light and shade as a study of sculpture,
and the trees are moulded into their natural dome-like forms, with play of light
and shade on the mass ; in such a scene, an inferior painter is tempted either
to keep his sky very thin, in order to get it well back from the invading trees,
■or else, if the sky has much variegation, to turn his trees into a mere dark
screen, perfectly flat, so as easily to insure the desired contrast and difference
of values. Constable boldly moulds his clouds, and vigorously lights the sun-
ward edges of his trees, trusting to his close copywork of nature to get his
firmament fifty miles away. A man in a boat is guiding the prow by means
of a rope passing around a post through the brimming reservoir of the lock,
which the care-taker is raising with a lever applied to the gate. Beyond
stretches a level view of a flat country, of which a considerable stretch is
commanded from the elevadon of the race-bank. In spirit and idea it is all
English — homely, familiar, dew-bathed, and tender. It reminds us, in temper,
feeling and gratitude, of the lines in Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis":
"Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames?
The signal-elm that looks on Isley Downs,
The vale, the three lone wears, the youthful Thames?"
In the crowded vegetation with which he fills the foreground of this picture,
Constable is all himself Without pedantic analysis of forms and genera, with-
86 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
out that close attention to vegetable minutise which invariably turns landscape
art into botany, and destroys the higher truths of atmosphere, the painter gives
with great success the vital principle of weed-growth — the confusion, the struggle
for light and air, the soft brushing of leaf against leaf .surcharged with moisture.
This ardent study of a great inventor's, "The Lock," is twice noteworthy: first
as it hangs, as a hit at nature taken on the fly, and second as a document,
showing the invasion of realism into academic art early in this century. It is
in some of its qualities a resuvte of the advice which West gave Constable in
his youth, and which it was not his own cue to act upon. "Always remember,
sir, that light and shadow never stand still." Hamerton quoting this proverb,
says, " It thus became one of Constable's main purposes to make people feel
the motions of cloud-shadows and gleams of light stealing upon objects and
brightening before we are quite aware of it."
It is hardly unfair or extravagant to say that Emile Breton's picture of
"The Canal at Courrieres" results from Constable's "Lock." This sincere and
simply-viewed landscape effect could be traced, through a connected series of
studies and exemplars, logically and materially back to England and the studio
of Constable. It is part of the same movement, the championship of pure
nature, of pure impression as the phrase goes, and the hewing in pieces of
Claude and Poussin. The simple life of the brothers Breton, one of the most
charming imaginable examples of gentle existence in rustic France, is an idyl
in itself, and is in perfect harmony with Constable's rustic way of living in the
heart of nature. Among the dandies of Paris who throng before the pictures
at the spring exhibitions, there is seen most years a singular and charming
figure — a short, solid-looking countryman, tanned and rough, with hat carried
respectfully in hand, hair blowing about in the utter absence of pomade, a
preposterous old watch-chain, and a waistcoat of white Marseilles stuff, pro-
fusely adorned with flowers of all colors: such a make-up would be the fortune
of a comic actor in the part of a "brave paysan;" but the country farmer
elbows his way with modest confidence to the most exquisite examples of art
in the exhibition, and some of the dandies make way for him with unfeigned
respect, for he is known to be Jules Breton, painter of some of the finest of
them all. Jules, renowned for his figure-subjects, has a younger brother, Emile,
a landscapist, in character not unlike himself, and the author of the picture we
88 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
represent on page 76. From the agreeable pen of Rene Menard we have a
Hfelike sketch of all the brothers. Courrieres, where they live, is a little
village in French Flanders, Departement du Nord. Of the children who played
about in the mayor's garden, and watched with delight the house-painter
touching up the eyes and lips ot the four wooden garden statues every spring,
the youngest was Emile, the subject of this paragraph. When he was nine
months old, however, and before such intelligent watching was possible to him,
he lost his father, the good mayor, the year being 1827. Nothing can exceed
the charm and the goodness, the mixture of patriarchal despotism and sub-
stantial kindness, of a French country mayor in an out-of-the-way province.
Looking like a market-huckster, he is armed with the majesty of Rhadamanthus
and graced with the goodness of Sir Roger de Coverley. Another brother now
inherits the good, simple office of mayor vacated by the father, and conducts
the village brewery. Jules, the great painter of "The Benediction of Harvest,"
is some three years older than Emile, which vast advantage in point of time
has made him treat the junior like a patron and guardian all his life. During
the ruinous overturnings of 1848, the career of the family was clouded by
poverty, owing to which circumstance, says M. Menard, "the younger brother,
Emile Breton, enlisted in the army, but after a time he resumed his studies in
painting, and is now among our most distinguished landscape-painters. Pictures
like those of Emile Breton charm by a mixture of poetry and reality; his
moonlight effects and winter scenes assign to him an eminent position among
our best painters. When the invasion came he separated himself from his family
to defend his country, and his conduct was such that his general embraced him
on the field of battle. After the war he returned to art, and in the last exhi-
bitions his pictures had so much success that public opinion now places him by
the side of his brother. The talent of the two brothers, though applied to
different objects, presents nevertheless great affinities, since we find in the
figures of the one, as in the landscapes of the other, the search after truthful-
ness combined with an extreme refinement in their way of understanding
nature." Both the landscapes contributed by Emile Breton belong to the class
called "impressions;" they are not meant to be examined from the distance of
a foot and with the aid of a magnifying-glass, but to be viewed for the whole
effect and from a somewhat remote position. Under these conditions they are
FINE ART.
89
found to deliver the aspect of nature with a close verity not often reached by
painting. The "Village in Winter" records the exact appearance of soft, heavy,
clogging, and lumpish snow; you can positively see it melt. The "Canal at
Courrieres" makes capital of the straightness, starkness and uncompromising
The Youthful Hiiiinldal.
Bronze by the Ci^valicr Epi^iay.
rigidity of the water-course beside which the artist has played from childhood.
The two banks, as if laid out with a ruler, recede in perspective towards the
point of sight as you look up the canal; on each side rise small perpendicular
trees, trimmed every year in French fashion: it is like looking up a tunnel —
the straight level bars of cloud closing over the top and completing the effect
of imprisoning the sight between the bars of a sort of cage. The low and
Xext Move.
92 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
rather melancholy light strays as best it can through this all-enclosing prison.
It will be observed that the water of the canal seems perfectly level, though its
wedge-shaped boundaries would give it the look of a hill-side in the hands of
an unskillful artist. Mr. Breton gives us a direct, unadorned, literal page from
the book of nature: it is the unfeigaed report of an impression derived from
a particular place and hour; this candid scene is worthy to figure as the back-
ground of one of his brother's peasant groups.
The pathetic subject of which we give a representation on page 73, "La
Rota," is by Mr. Rudolph Lehmann, of London. The picture represents an
incident only too common in Rome, where the scene is laid. A wretched
mother has brought her babe in the evening to the foundling hospital, and is
about to place the tiny creature in the "wheel," or turning bo.\ at the window,
to become henceforth a waif and unclassified citizen. In a little while she will
have departed, and the good nun within will search the receptacle for the little
nestling, never more to know mother or kindred. The culpable and weak-
hearted girl, of course, is not too hardened to part from her off"spring without
a pang; there is genuine grief in her last despairing kiss, and, perhaps, genuine
pious feeling in the care with which the rosary has been brought along with
the cradle. It is the resolute endurance of obloquy for the future advantage
of the infant, of which the impulsive, impressionable Southern character is
incapable; to find this heroism of the depths, we have to seek a sterner and
more exalted race, among the duty-laden peoples of the North — ex. gr., Hester
Prynne, and "The Scarlet Letter." Mr. Lehmann has dirown his figure into a
very graceful pose, without doing violence to that directness of action and
uncalculating simplicity which the subject demands, and which these moments
of soul-outpouring provide. The cradle deserves a note, too — cradle and
basket at once, with hoop handle for convenient transport, such as the Italian
poor make use of How often has this cradle-pannier made its innocent
journeys from door-step to hearth, and from floor to grass-plot, perhaps for
generations, without consciousness that it should one night make its stealthy
trip, along the narrowest, filthiest and loneliest alleys of Rome, to the "Rota"
m the hospital of infamy!
Mr. K. Dielitz, of Berlin, shows a piece of hearty, sympathetic genre
painting, in the subject we illustrate on page 41, entitled "I and my Pipe."
FINE ART. 93
This fine young Bavarian peasant, from his festal dress, seems to have returned
from some hohday occasion — perhaps a shooting-match, perhaps a sermon. The
luxury with which he stretches his stalwart and clean-shaped legs, and concen-
trates all his attention on the filling and lighting of his pipe, is quite contagious
in its hearty humor. The pipe, like the magnificent porcelain stove against
which his broad back is set, is monumental in its dimensions. A witty writer
says the German peasant's face is composed ot the following features: the
eyes, the nose, and the — pipe.
We may gratify our national vanity by taking a specimen of American
industry as a contrast to Bavarian otium cum dignitatis. Mr. E. T. Billings, of
Boston, sends to the Exhibition a highly characteristic interior representing a
wheelwright shop, with the capable-looking master bending his philosopher's
forehead over a felloe for the wheel that is in process of construction at his
side. The extraordinary scrupulosity with which every detail of the shop is
individualized and dwelt upon renders this picture a litde wonder. The artist
does not spare us a chisel, a saw, a gauge, or a glue-pot. It is Dutch patience
celebrating American skill. There is capital training for the painter in the
elaboration of one of these laborious toys of art ; there are provoking little
problems of drawing, perspective and grouping to be worked out, and the
general difficulty of giving each item its prominence without losing breadth;
and one would say that every artist, no matter how large a style, how volup-
tuous a color, how easy a grace, how masterly a generalization he is ultimately
to attain to, might profitably spend a year of his youth in putting together one
of these intricate puzzles. It is said that Sir John Gilbert occupied his boyhood
in drawing the details of ornamental carriages; so the not altogether different
business of a wheelwright shop may be the training destined to conduct Mr.
Billings to fame and excellence.
For the entirely graceful and feminine figure of "The Bather" — engraved
on page 72 — we are indebted to Professor Antonio Tantardini, of Milan. The
posture of this shrinking woman — who seems to fear surprisal — is at first sight
somewhat like that of Mr. Howard Roberts' statue of "The First Pose." In
both, the foot is timidly drawn up into the mass of drapery on which the
fiofure sits, and the face is shielded in the rio^ht elbow ; this is, of course, an
accidental resemblance, and only proves the fact which has become proverbial
94 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1 8 j 6.
among sculptors, that there are very few poses in nature for the artist to select
from. Immense have been the number of "Bathers" contributed to art by
sculptors and painters in want of a theme, the plain reason being that the
situation of bathing is one of the very few in which a modern female subject
can be treated without any violation ot modesty of character. The artist,
impelled to make a study of nude flesh — after all, the worthiest exercise afforded
by nature to the craft — can hardly find another situation in modern life which
affords him the needed revelation, without the slightest sacrifice of womanly
character. The variations, too, which may be played on this delicate theme arc
infinite. Let the careless reader, who is disposed to pass by Tantardini's fine
work with the hasty remark, "Only another bathing girl!" turn' again to the
glowing and delicate episode of Musidora, in Thomson's " Seasons," as he reads
for one more time this gentle pastoral, which the Italian sculptor seems to have
been familiar with, he will comprehend the resources which art can find in the
topic of modesty taken at a disadvantage.
Another sculptor of Milan, Signor Egidio Pozzi, contributes to the Exhibi-
tion a sitting male figure, supposed to represent Michael Angelo in his youth.
We present an engraving of this work on page 8i. The Milanese artist repre-
sents his immortal fellow-sculptor at that period of his boyhood when he
studied all day long in the garden of Lorenzo de Medici, "the Magnificent,''
in Florence, among the treasures of antique statuary which the growing taste
for such collections had then amassed in that retreat. It is related that the
first original work of the young genius was a face of an antique satyr, or faun
— one of those grotesques which the architecture of tlie period demanded in
abundance for the decoration of keystones and lintels. The greater the extrava-
gance of expression, the richer the satisfaction of the architect, and the artists
of the time exhausted their fancy in giving the look of leering, fantastic intelli-
gence to these stone faces which peered over arches and portals, and conferred
an air of conscious slyness and counsel-keeping on the various apertures ot an
edifice. Michael Aneelo's first effort was as ereat a hit as the mature efforts
of finished sculptors in this line, and the row of tnascarons. or grotesque faces
made by Jean Goujon for tlie Pont Neuf in Paris, contained no example more
expressive than this first specimen, which had been made by the elfish stripling
in Florence. " However, your faun is wrong," said Lorenzo, laughing indulgently
FINE ART.
95
over the boy's shoulder. " He Is old and has cracked many a hard nut with
those grinning teeth; he ought to have lost some of them by this time."
When the Magnifico passed next into the garden, young Michael had knocked
out a tooth, and the patron, pleased with his own cleverness and the lad's, was
96 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIB ITION, 1876.
unreserved in his praise of a worlc wliich now recorded a diought of liis own
widiin one of Michael Angelo's. The figure sent to us by Signor Pozzi is one
of intellectual delicacy ; it is hardly that ot the fiery young goblin who drew his
own face, with pointed ears as a satyr, before he was twenty-one, and who, in
this same garden of Florence, so taunted Torregiano that the latter marked
him for life with a broken nose. It is a representation of the etherial, creative
part of Michael Angelo's character. The lad before us seems likely to grow
up into a sort of seraphic being, more like a Raphael than like the gusty and
morose recluse who carved the Moses. Yet, it is undeniable that this lonely
man had his side of ineffable tenderness, and there is artistic justification for
the artist who chooses to represent that phase of his nature on which his con-
temporaries were continually harping, when they played upon his name and said
that his works were exected by an "Angelo."
One of the most creditable representatives of our country abroad is Mr.
Frederick A. Bridgman, whose picture of " Bringing in the Corn " is engraved
on pages 82 and 83. Mr. Bridgman, when a young lad, became tired of executing
line-engravings for the Bank Note Company in New York, and determined to
open for himself a career as an oil painter. He looked like a mere boy when he
took his seat, in 1867, among the students of one of the large ateliers of Paris;
but the professor soon noticed that he had uncommon application and advanced
rapidly out of the hard /inev st)'le which his apprenticeship to the burin had
cramped him into. Young Bridgman passed his summers in Brittany, and
afterwards went to Algiers and Egypt. If ever artist fulfilled Apelles' motto
of "Nulla dies sine linea" it was this indefatigable worker. Now, his reputa-
tion is both European and American, and the Liverpool Academy has bought
one ot his pictures as a model to its students and an adornment of its galleries.
He is a constant contributor to American exhibitions, but he has seldom sent
to his native country a better scene than the Brittany subject which we intro-
duce to our readers. The drawing of the patient oxen, with their liquid eyes
and hides ot plush, is worthy of Rosa Bonheur, or any animalistwho ever painted.
The rustic scenery represents to the life one of those narrow earthy roads of
Brittany, which have stretched between the old town for thousands of }'ears, in
many cases, and whose bed is often worn to a hollow beneath the level of the
fields from the mere carrying ofif of its dust, through centuries of travel. The
FINE ART
97
picture basks in a delicious breadth of soft summer sunshine which in Finis-
tere is never dry and never too intense — and the type of an honest farmer's
H. Moulin, Sc.
A Secret.
boy, who balances the goad in his toughened rustic hands and goes along the
road singing and contented, is a fresh and pretty thing to see. Mr. Brido--
The Ha,
fits — Haddon Hall.
fhc Uamnis^lljJdjn HjU.
lOO THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
man's versatility is shown in the fact that he paints all subjects about equally
well, whether landscapes, or circus scenes, or life-size Oriental heads, or country
eclogues, like the example we are considering.
A French figure-painter, who is no tyro, and is by no means young, yet
who has made within a few years a quite novel and separate effect for himself
by a fresh and original style of portraits, is the artist who calls himself " Carolus
Duran." His old friends remember him as plain Charles Durand. He excites
attention because in each of his portraits there is a new study of character,
surroundings, relief and light and shade. To the "Salon" of 1876 he sent a
portrait of the editor Girardin, in the stuffy seclusion of his study, backed up
and almost wrapped up with a voluminous red curtain. To a previous one he
conveyed the portrait of Mile. Croizette, of which we show a representation on
page 87, in the full liberty of air and space, sitting on horseback, with the long
beach in front of her and the illimitable sea behind. Mile. Croizette is the
actress who made her grand sensation by turning green and dying of poison
every night as the' suicide in "The Sphinx." When those of our readers who
have not seen the original are told that this lovely horsewoman of Monsieur
Duran's is a woman the size of nature, on a bay hackney the size of nature,
standing out dark and distinct from an Infinite that is the size of nature too,
they may conceive that this work — though only a portrait — attracts about as
muth attention as any painting in the French Department. Many visitors, too,
have seen her great part played in our own theatres and have heard of Mile.
Croizette as the creator of it, and therefore have a personal interest in this
gifted and fascinating woman, who is the sister-in-law of the painter. The
picture, indeed, is one you cannot escape from ; whenever you are in the large
room where it hangs, the ripe, imperial beauty, turning to you her questioning,
rallying face reins you up as she does her steed. She impresses each spec-
tator as if she had something very particular to say to him. This individual
appeal is the charm of a French society-woman, and it is the charm, too, of
a certain class of the best portraits of the old masters. For our own part
we habitualh- think about this picture — which we have been irresistibly drawn
to a great many times — that the attractiveness of it resides especially in the
face, around which all the rest of the composition plays as a mere Arabesque.
The eyes of the figure strike so directly into the eyes of your own head, and
. P J-^.tlll^L-
IFEEBiF"^- ■""'"'F. SACIRISJO IBIS KW THE MAILILS OF ]KAT.OJA(Do
FINE ART. loi
the smiling, appealing, sidelong visage talks to you so intimately, that you
have but a divided attention left for the neat hackney — with its uncommonly
short ears — that stands off from the sky like a bronze, or for the iron drapery
and cast-steel hat, which form the insignificant continuations of the beauty's
commanding head and softly-turning neck. It must be acknowledged that the
portraitist requires a great deal of space to relate his impression. Is there no
way of expressing a fine woman's thoughts about the sea, and that sense of
dominating something which she so much enjoys as the mistress of a fine
animal, without importing the sea and the fine animal both bodily into the
canvas ? Taken as it stands, however, the picture is a triumph of perfectly
clear analysis in, and careful relief of, objects against a distant sky. To deter-
mine merely the right tint of that bright face against that bright sky, so that
the flesh should look like flesh and the firmanent like light, was a whole volume
of problems in art. The clearness with which the character, and a special
mood of a character, is defined is above all a singularity of the picture ; you
see just how far the painter is impressed by his model, and are reminded of
some of Alfred de Mussett's analyses. The French are always logical and
retain their logical expression even when submitting to a charm.
The gentle negro slave-girl, whom one of our prettiest steel-plates shows
in the act of feedingf a flock of storks, is the work of an eminent English
artist, Edward J. Poynter, A. R. A. It is called "The Ibis Girl," or, more explana-
torily, " Feeding the Sacred Ibis in the Hall of Karnac." It is a singular and
lovely picture, and there is a sly, quaint humor in the contrast between the
ibis-headed god on the elevation of his pillar, with incense rising up to his
sacred beak, and the real ibises, who display such frank carnivorous appetite
at his feet. The ibis, it is known, was sacred to Thoth, the Egyptian Mercury.
Those ancient Africans, with their extraordinary talent for finding hidden
meanings in things, discovered that the inundation of the Nile was caused by
the annual coming of the ibis, instead of being the mere pretext of a visit
when the feathered pilgrims wanted food. Impressed with this idea, they fer-
vently worshipped the symbol presented by the migrating ibis, and, that the
sign of their land's fertility might be never wanting, reared the birds in their
temples with the greatest care. When a chick came out of the &^^ black, he
was welcomed as a specially fortunate guest, honored during his life and spiced
I02 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
and embalmed after his death. Mr. Poynter's subject is an inferior ministrant
of the temple feeding these birds with fish. Her posture is simple, natural and
beautiful, and in its soft rounded form offers a contrast to the varied attitudes
of ungainliness among the birds around her. Wrapped in transparent linen
tissue, and covered with heavy symbolic jewelry, she feeds the storks with a
shower of small fish which she scoops in a patera out of the large basin held
against her hip. The monstrous pillars of Karnac, painted and covered with
bas-reliefs, close in the background. The birds, who are bolting their food in
a gormandizing and irreligious manner, are capitally studied, laying their long
beaks sideways on the ground to gobble better, or elevating their heads and
shaking the food into their throats as into a hopper. The innocent interest of
the simple-minded black novice is very well felt by the artist. It is the precise
shade of feeling demanded — the reverent care of a sacred thing, modified by
familiarity, but not obscured — the humility of the Levite who sustains the temple
ser\'ice. A well-known French picture, illustrating a well-known French proverb,
shows two augurs amongst the sacred chickens laughing heartily at the joke
of the thing, and turning their backs upon the mystical hen-coops. Mr. Poynters'
gentle priestess will never laugh at her feathered gods.
Our nearest neighbor, the Dominion of Canada, is represented at the
Centennial Exhibition by one hundred and fifty-six paintings, among which are
several of a high order of merit. One of the most versatile exhibitors, whose
works represent the three styles of portrait, marine and imaginative art, is
Mr. J. C. Forbes. Of this gentleman's portraits, that delineating his Excellency
Lord Dufferin, is of a particularly close resemblance, as many of those who
have been glad to meet the distinguished original on his "Centennial" tour,
have hastened to testify. His marine painting is an interesting representation
of the foundering of the ship "Hibernia" in mid-ocean; in his third or "imagi-
native" ^i?«r^, the artist presents himself as the illustrator of an American poet.
Longfellow's song of "Beware!" from the romance of Hyperion, has been
accepted for thirty years as the best and standard expression of feminine
coquetr)'; and this is the poem which our neighborly contributor chooses to
embody in a graceful picture, engraved by us on page 61. A lady, whose
beauty and elegance are not concealed by a somewhat worldly-mannered
carriage, is touching the feathers of a fan with her pearly teeth, while the
Omnt vi/n Harach, Pinx,
Luther Intercepted.
I04 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
finsjers of one hand are triflincr with the Ions: chain she wears, as if she was
ready to throw it over her victim. The narrow, languid eyes gaze into the
beholder's with the refinement of tender flirtation. It is the figure we meet in
the parlor, in the park, in the piazza ot the watering-place; one would say
she was all heart; but
"Take care !
She knows how much 'tis best to show!
Beware ! Beware !
Trust her not,
• She is fooling thee ! ' '
Another illustration of English poetry — this time of a loftier and more
serious nature — is the statue of "Luciter," in pure white marble, by Signor
Corti, of Milan. Our cut, on page 80, gives an excellent idea of the original,
if it be borne in mind that the statue is of the lull size of an ordinary human
form. It is one of the most seriously treated and practically conceived figures
which the prolific Italian sculptors have shown to us. The conception is that
of Milton's "Paradise Lost," representing the lost angel, not as a base and
intellectually degraded being, but as the fallen rebel, nothing less than arch-
angel ruined. The moment chosen is that after the immersion in the lake of
fire, when the vanquished chieftain first recovers his ethereal strength.
"Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty statue. On each hand the flames
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rolled
In billows, leave i' the 'midst a horrid vale."
The figure of Lucifer is that oi an athlete in the pride of youthful strength,
yet rather nervous and ethereal in its power than ponderous or solid. Upon
the haughtily squared shoulders rides a head of most proud and noble carriage,
surmounting a long boyish neck. The vast wings, covered with disheveled
feathers, are drooping and half closed behind the shoulders, and the long
agitated locks, from which heaven's ambrozia has been scorched all away, flow
wildly back and meet the torn plumage of the pinions. The expression of the
head, turned proudly to the right with a look of angry investigation, needs no
description of ours, having been so superbly anticipated by Milton.
FINE ART.
I OS
Giuiii! Branca, Sc. 'fhe \oung Grape Gatherer.
Another sort of "Lucifer," or light-bearer, is seen in the pretty bronze
statue, by Antonio Rosetti, of the "Telegraph," or "Genius of Electricity." This
O- i"- fc^tn^i^ , /
Lady yane Gr
Triumph over Bishop Gardiner.
r
io8 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
figure is one of a pair, of which the other represents with equal felicity the
idea which Rumsey and John Fitch elaborated so painfully on our shores — the
idea of the railway-engine. Of the "Electricity" we present a steel engraving.
Signer Rosetti hails from Rome, — the last city on the face of the globe, one
would think, into which these modern innovations would penetrate; to anni-
hilate time, annihilate space, — what interest has Rome in these, or what would
she be if the time of her enduring or the extension of her ancient sway were
lost to thought! Yet these disturbances and destructions, doing away with
distances and periods, have swept at last, by the throne of the Popes and the
sepulchre of the Caesars, and Rome is modern and pretty, like the rest of the
world. Signor Rosetti has aimed at representing not so much the power, as
the agility, delicacy and grace of the electric spark. Just born to illuminate
the world, the child of lio-ht balances in one hand the torch of intelligfence,
while with the other he wraps the wire cables around the glass insulators which
stud like mushrooms the stems of the trees; the forest of electric masts will
cover the globe, and time will be shrivelled to nothingness, as the corpulent
old planet throbs within the girdle of Puck.
The most celebrated sculptor, whose labors contribute to the embellishment
of our exhibition, is certainly |ohn Gibson, whose death lately caused such deep,
wide and unfeigned regret in the art-world. Kindly wrapped in his art,
wonderfully absent-minded — the ideal of an idealist — Gibson was for many years
the British lion in the circles of Rome, where he abode. His "Venus," executed
for .St. George's Hall, that classical Parthenon of Liverpool, is represented at
the Centennial by a replica, which occupies the post of honor in the largest
gallery appropriated to British use, and is represented by our engraving on
page 64. The original excited a storm of doubt and objection by being stained
or colored in imitation of life. Gibson's previous works, the details of his
"Queen Victoria" and "Aurora" were faintly tinted, but the "Venus" showed
the experiment carried out to its utmost limit. The first "Venus" was exhibited
in 1854, in a chamber arranged for the special purpose, and the wondering
crowd saw the marble entirely disguised under a flesh tint, which obscured the
translucency though it did not affect the form of the marble, while the eyes,
hair and draper)' were stained to imitate the appearance of actual life. In the
present duplicate, kindly committed by its owner, Richard C. Xaylor, Esq., to
'.^J^-^
ifli*
. I'W"'"" #'
llfcwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^
1J- S.IiiteTiiational Ext:a'bitLOii,1876-
THE GENIUS OF ELECTRICITY,
FROM THE STATUE BY ANTONIO ROSETTI, ROMI
R-EBBIB &BARRa;,
FINE ART. 109
the risks and perils of exhibition, we have the purity of a beautiful fragment
of Italian marble. The artist represents with dignity, with sweetness, and even
with somewhat of the lymphatic and sedentary plumpness of the ordinary British
matron, the charms of Venus Victrix. In her left hand she exhibits the apple,
detur pulchriori, which Discord had contributed to the marriage-feast of Peleus.
The robe she has relinquished hangs over her arm and trails over the carapace
of that mystical tortoise, which was the attribute of the divinity at Elis. Yes,
she grasps at length the easily-won apple. Paris will steal Greek Helen, and
the Grecian ships will dart to the Cape of Sagseum, and Troy will blaze, — but
what cares Beauty, — supreme in her conquest of smiles and graces, alone on
her pedestal of white supremacy?
Few English artists are thought of more admiringly in France than W. O.
Orchardson. "Of M. Orchardson," says PArt, "it may be said that he is
essentially a painter. Whatever subject he may select, even incompletely
represented, you see that he has been attracted by some quality sincerely
picturesque, or by an effect which it belongs to painting to render ably ='■ * * The
painter is a colorist by race." He contributes two specimens of his skill to the
Centennial display, one a humorous picture of Falstaff, Poins and the Prince,
the other a wonderful expression of sentiment in landscape, " Moonlight on the
Lagoons, Venice." The expression of fleet racing motion communicated to the
sky full of hurrying clouds, as well as to the darting boat and the sweeping
water, is worthy of a poet. All the picture hurries together, from left to right,
yet with a power as soft as love, while inexorable as fate. There is no lio-hr
on the horizon — the last lamps of Murano or the Lido has been left behind,
and the glittering shore of Venice is outside the picture ; there is nothing but
the diffused lustre of the moon, whose orb is not visible, but whose brightness
flashes and waves behind a certain station among the clouds ; immediately
beneath this brightest spot is drawn the black iron beak of the gondola; as
the beak rises towards it and defines the place of the moon, so the stretching
oar of the gondolier tends directly to it, the bench on which he stands is laid
toward it, and the two female figures assist, by the brightened folds of their
drapery, to point to an illuminator which we cannot see. The supreme lone-
liness of the sea and sky, emphasized rather than contradicted by the black
darting boat, gives a curious hush to this impressive painting.
no THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
The long, intense, memorable monotone which Orchardson introduces into
his marine is deeply poetic in its way, and is characteristic of certain modern
studies and states of feeling. The fine old windy sense of the open sea, — the
feeling characteristic of the day when Dibdin sang its songs and Stanfield
painted its tides, — is indicated by an American artist, Mr. Briscoe, with
peculiar success, in the subject of our steel-plate, "A Breezy Day off Dieppe."
This excellent picture was long in the principal American room. Gallery C,
and numbered 158. The picturesque gables and square tower of the town,
whose chimneys send curling sooty clouds into the dirty weather of the zenith,
occupy the left : the most sharply serrated roof stands dark against the brightest
opening in the firmament: the fishing boats are racing in, lowering their sails
hastily as they make the pier ; the waves are dancing in light and gloom, the
gulls are blown like foam along their crests, and a row-boat filled with fishy
ballast Is making towards the slippery staircase quay. It is a capital picture
of amphibious life, and our engraver has been peculiarly felicitous in making
his contrasts of light and shade do duty for combinations of color. As for the
painter, his manipulation of forms and values, so that every object is in its
necessarily right place, and would unhinge the composition if removed, shows a
mastery of scenic effect.
The Diisseldorf school of painting, formerly a great favorite for its clever
scenes of familiar life, is represented by a small constituency in the Fair ; Is
this indicative of a waning popularity ? The pleasant feeling of old days, when
the Diisseldorf gallery was the vogue of the metropolis, and innocent maidens
at balls wondered how long it took "Mr. Diisseldorf" to paint so many
pictures, comes blowing back, a breeze of youth, as we gaze at Ewers's " Duet
in the Smithy" of which our elaborate engraving is seen on page 65. It is
Hogarthism translated into German : each canvas is a page, with an anecdote,
an epigram, or a witticism, clearly set down — like an acknowledged wit's after-
dinner story. Of this table-talk of art, the " Smithy " is an amusing specimen.
The apprentice, who has music in his soul, and whose master is absent. Is
letting the fire go out, the irons cool, the bellows collapse, and the baby
explode, as he plays his flute from a music-book reared up against the water-
ing-pot. The capital misfortune Is that the tail-board of baby's cart has fallen,
and the infant, with his plump feet much higher than his head, is howling his
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During the Sermon.
112 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
obligato part in the " duet." A man who will be a Hogarth exposes himself to
perils through his very ingenuity ; determined to introduce as many graphic
objects as the space will hold, he forgets their mutual relations ; thus Herr
Ewers, glad to show his ability in poultr)', leads a meditative, corn-hooking hen
a great deal nearer the roaring baby than the most distrait hen would get in
nature. But the picture is expressively designed and well painted. As is
proper to one of these dolce far niente themes, our sympathies are led out
altogether with the young Beethoven, impelled by the inner god of song to set
aside present duty, instead of with the utilitarian aspects of the case ; even the
inverted baby gets but small share of our concern in comparison with the
possessed, dreaming rhapsodist, who tames the strength of his burly black-
smith's arm to the nicedes of his playing. His pleasant, whole-souled, round-
headed figure is interesting and individual, though the face is concealed, and
there is real ability in which the beautiful velvety, sooty richness ot an old
forge is represented in the background.
Although the conception of Mr. Gibson is rather correct than original, his
o-oddess is smooth and delicate, but hardly divine. It is curious what difficulty
even the most devoted lovers of the ancients have in producing a work which
would even at the first glance be taken for an antique. Mr. Gibson observes
the Greek rules of simplicity; directness; absence of profound expression; but
these negatives do not result in that position, a deceptive counterfeit of Greek
plastic art. One of his few pupils in latter times has been Miss Harriet
Hosmer. John Gibson, born in Wales late in the last century, practised
wood-carving in Liverpool, studied in Italy under Canova and Thorwaldsen,
and sent to the Royal Academy at home, in 1827, his "Psyche borne by
Zephyrs," of which Sir George Beaumont, the ardst's best friend then, became
the owner. This portrait-statue, such as the numerous ones of the Queen,
those of Peel, of George Stephenson, of Huskisson, are more sadsfactory than
his ideal figures. His great claim to nodce Is, after all, the idea he conceived
of tinting his figures, which he defended stoutly by reference to those traces
of color on Greek and Greco-Roman work which an artist residing in Italy
must so often see, and by which he must so inevitably be set to speculating.
Gibson never solved the problem; he never stifled by any supreme success
the voice of hostile criticism; but if the triumphs of later men in polychromatic
,l!^~
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tr. S. T!iteiTLa.ti(!iL3l ExlabiTioii.1876 .
iriEifUS =
fiEBBI';. K; l-.A',.-,
114 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
sculpture should ever cause the taste to prevail, and our statue-galleries of the
future should shine with colors as in the time of the best Greek art, then
Gibson will occupy an honorable place as pioneer.
Among the specimens of that flexible, winning, seductive treatment of
marble which made the Italian sculpture at the Centennial a revelation, a
favorite specimen was "The Finding of Moses," by Francesco Barzaghi of
Milan. This group occupied a conspicuous central position in die Fourth
Room of the Art-Annex, and from its subject secured a general sympathy. It
was by no means the only contribution of the distinguished Milanese ; his
"Phryne," after having unveiled her charms at more than one world's fair,
occupied a prominent neighboring position, and his "Silvia" and "First Ride"
were ornaments of the Nineteenth Room of the same edifice. "The Child
Moses," however, was undoubtedly the elect of popular suffrage out of the
whole contribudon of the sculptor. The beaudful child, a model of cherubic
infancy, is represented by Signor Barzaghi in the arms of his sister Miriam, a
budding maiden in the formal Egyptian cap. The gentle slave girl is holding
up the little foundling, with a tearful smile tliat would disarm cruelty itself, to
see if she can win the favor of the dread Egypdan princess, whose presence
must be supplied by imagination. There are some wild legends, quite outside
the scriptural history, which excite the imagination in considering that strange
interview between the Pharaoh's daughter — whose name is said to have been
Thermutis — and the helpless young brother and sister. According to these
rabbinical tales, Thermutis was a lepress, and had six sisters also in the same
unpleasant plight. The baby touch of the future Hebrew statesman healed
them all, and for that reason he was allowed to be reared in the gyneceum of
the palace. Other singular and rather unbiblical stories cling around the group
of the slave-lawgiver, his mother Jochabed, and his prophetess-sister Miriam.
More than one of the Italian sculptors represented at the Exposiuon has rep-
resented the incident of Moses trampling on the crown. It Is narrated that the
infant was one day playing boldly with the king, when Rameses placed his
crown on the little Hebrew's head ; Moses, inspired with a holy hatred of the
idols with which the diadem was sculptured, tore it off and dashed it to the
ground. Such is the fable which Messieurs Cambi and Martegani have illus-
trated in their spirited statues contributed to the Exposition. The sequel of
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GEBBtE & BABTSIE .
FINE ART. 115
the crown incident, according to the legend, is that when the courtiers would
have punished the inspired infant for his revolutionary action, a wise counsellor,
more merciful than the rest, said, "Show him a ruby and a live coal; if he
snatches at the coal, he does not know right from wrong, and may be quit
for the scorching he will get." An opportune angel guided Moses' baby-fingers,
not to the gem, but to the coal, which he put into his mouth, and gave himself
that contraction of the tongue which was the life-mark of his career and the
symbol of his wisdom. These single figures of Moses and the crown are prob-
ably the work of revolutionary Italians, anxious to express symbolically their
opposition to royalty; but the group is more classical, and is a work of pure
and gracious idyllic art. Signor Barzaghi has made a tender, plaintive, appealing
work, which takes possession of the heart-strings at once. It is gratifying to
be able to state that this pure and elevating piece of sculpture does not leave
the city with the close of the festival it was sent to grace. It has become the
property of the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.
While the Bible-leaf is still open, as it were, with the beautiful poem of
Moses in the arms of Miriam, we may turn back thi^ough the pages of the
present work and consult Huntington's large and impressive subject of Bible-
reading, entitled "Sowing the Word." This picture, which occupied a com-
manding position on the south wall of Gallery C, was seen necessarily by all
who even hastily examined the American department, and will be instantly
recognized in our elaborate copy on page 25. A venerable man is expounding
the Scriptures. His a-uditors are two maidens of the most contrasted types,
recalling Leonardo's "Modesty and Vanity" in the Sciarra collection. One is
dark, studious, attentive, and drinks in the Word like thirsty soil ; die other,
blonde, gay, distraite, and worldly, plays with a flower and looks away from the
lesson. Immediately above her head, in the tapestry on the wall, the Maid-
mother nurses her divine infant. The three heads, set so close together, express
with that instantaneous emphasis which only the sight of a work of art can
give, the three temperaments with which religion has to do — the didactic, which
enforces and perpetuates it ; the frivolous, which repels it ; and the receptive,
which absorbs and illustrates it. The important temperament of the three, so
far as the vitality of religion on the earth is concerned, is the middle one, — the
trifling and obstinate. It is the perpetual resistance which tests the tool ; and
ii6
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
again, our race is more improved by converting one mind trom an obstacle into
an aid, than by letting a good many naturally sober ones go on in their mod-
eration without conflict. Mr. Huntington has always shown a strong moral
i
C. P<t»,iiani, Sf.
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tendency in his more serious works. His masterpieces, produced in youth, were
the "Mercy's Dream" and "Christian Martyrs," and for these he will always be
accorded a hi'di niche in American art.
FINE ART. 117
William and James Hart, Scotchmen by birth, have long occupied a con-
spicuous place in the landscape art of this country. Their love of nature,
educated among the heather and gowans, has turned with frank acceptance to
the characteristics of American landscape, and has made them valuable inter-
preters of our rich sunshine and varied leafage. By William Hart, we engrave
the picture of "Keene Valley," in the Adirondack region, on page 36: the
chasing lights and shadows of a breezy day, covering the concavity of the
valley with swift passages of gloom, is indicated by the strong chiaroscuro of
our engraving, but the color, which is one of Mr. Hart's especial claims to
disdnction, we cannot give. He loves to struggle with one of the most difficult
feats of landscape-paindng, the dazzling tints of our forests in autumn. His
pictures of those mounds of leafy bloom which the Adirondacks yield in
November are veritable bouquets of florid color. He is fond of introducing
catde into his scenes, — usually contrasting the colors of the animals strongly,
white against black and black against red, in the style of the German artist
Voltz. Of this ingenious arrangement, wherein we invariably find a white cow
in the foreground, like Wouverman's white horse, and another in sables close
by to relieve it, our cut gives a hint.
A French sculptor who is coming forward into deserved prominence is
H. Moulin, of whose bronze statue called "A Secret from on High" we give
a bold sketch on page 97. This capital work, after exciting unfeigned admira-
tion at a late Paris salon, has crossed the seas to become one of the favorites
of the judicious in the collection at Fairmount Park. The elastic poise of the
Mercury, conveying the sense of Shakespeare's line,
"New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill,"
indicates admirably the levity of the messenger-god ; it seems to be with diffi-
culty that his figure can touch the earth. Bending gently, he confides his
communication to a terminal image of a satyr, which will presently be consulted
as an oracle by some credulous mortal. We can fancy the answer, quite satiric,
which the grinning figure will give. The form of Mercury in this bronze is
really a masterpiece of simplicity and grace. The natural every-day action of
the hand which confines the caduceus, the expressive pointing movement of the
other hand, the whole play and gathering in of the slender young muscles
F. C. C.ntie. Finx.
The June's (.
'I) Entertainment.
,/
I20 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
which slip into each other and give the body a sinuous ease and an arching
grace as of an erecting serpent, are truly beautiful and rare. Among the very
great number of excellent studies of adolescence achieved by modern French
sculptors, this elegant figure deserves to keep a high rank.
Of M. Feyin-Perrin's gentle and thoughtful painting called "Melancholy"
(page 57), what need be said, but to cite Milton's immortal numbers? That
writer's exquisite "Penseroso" is a young man's poem; it breathes the sweet
captious sadness of youth, which is a fantasy of mood, not a necessity of experi-
ence. As we look at the picture, the unforgetable couplets come stealing
involuntarily into the thoughts :
" Come, but keep thy wonted state.
With even step and musing gait
And looks commercing with the skies.
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes;
There held in holy passion still,
Forget thyself to marble!"
In the painting, as in the poem, the sentiment is supplied half by the figure
and half by the landscape. Milton instances the inimitably close, private, world-
excluding, thought-compelling effect of a "still shower," "with minute drops
from off the eves." The painter, not less impressive, gives us the brooding air
of twilight in a wide landscape, where there is not a bird nor a flower, but
only the descending wings of crisping leaves to divide the air and stir the
tideless pool. Besides the "Melancholy," with its title borrowed from Diirer's
most poetical engraving, M. Feyen-Perrin contributed to Memorial Hall an
"Antique Dance," with a dozen graceful female forms, and a "Mother and
Child," representing a fisherman's wife tossing her infant on the sea-shore.
Another French painter has taken his inspiration from England. M. G.
Castiglione, ot Paris, inspired by the antique manorial beauty of the celebrated
Haddon Hall, has studied its fine facade and verdant terrace, which he makes
the scene ot an incident in the Cromwellian wars. Our large engraving on pages
98 and 99 gives an accurate idea of this interesting picture. One of Oliver's
ironsides comes with a search-warrant upon that lawn, sacred heretofore to
aristocratic mirth, games of tennis, and feudal hospitality. Perhaps the hospi-
tality to-day has been compromisingly generous ; some royalist refugee, whom
it is treason to keep, may be peeping from one of the countless windows of
122 THE INTERN AT ION AL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
the lofty Hall. Whatever the special incident may be, the painter has succeeded
in giving a piquant human interest to the grand old walls and stately parterre.
The party surprised by the entrance of the roundhead soldier is a gay and
stately one, giving the artist opportunity to show his knowledge of costume
and, manners in the brilliant epoch he represents. Nothing — not even a herd
of dappled deer — could so picturesquely dot the lovely glades of the foreground
as these stately, bright-robed figures of the historic past. M. Castiglione paints
with a crisp, finished touch of uncommon delicacy and exactness. Choosing a
theme exactly in the vein of some of the English water-colorists and anecdote-
painters, he gives it that air of novelty and fresh candor which is often con-
ferred on a subject when a foreign commentator approaches and makes his
statement. His picture is comparatively large, considering the scrupulous minute-
ness of its touches, and it deserves the elaborate copy which we have caused
to be presented to our readers.
The paintings sent from Italy made a comparatively feeble effect, falling
behind the sculpture in impressiveness and accent. Many of the large canvases
were the work of professors, who are growing rather fusty, and the flaming
band of brilliant colorists who have sprung up in Rome around the very ashes
of Fortuny, and who call themselves the "modern Roman school," was com-
pletely unrepresented. Far be it from us to disparage a collection which
contained the landscapes of Vertunni and the dramatic subjects of Gastaldi
and Faruffini ; but a late development of art which has caused a noise in the
world, and which might have made a timely and appropriate contribution, was
conspicuous by its absence, and the connoisseur, while straying through the
solemn works dry with all the dust of tlie learned academies, could but wish
that Boldini and Simonetti and Joris had sent some of their audacious and
expressive splashes of color to liquefy the collection.
Among the most pleasing Italian paintings were the few comparatively
unpretending subjects of genre. The humorous element, for instance in "During
the Sermon," by Pietro Michis, of Milan, though a litde out of place is irre-
sistible. The wood-cut on page 1 1 1 gives the pith of the incident. We see the
sacristy of an Italian church; these retiring-rooms, in the splendid ecclesiastical
edifices of Italy, are as richly ornamented as the basilicas themselves, and
accordingly we have as a foil to our pair of figures the inlaid floor, the caryatid
THE RAT HUETERS.
nition-lSYG
FINE ART. 123
carving, the sculptured panel with its Pax vobis. Here, in a sunny corner, the
little choir-boys, dressed for the service in their pretty overshirts of lace, are
beguiling the time till they are wanted to take part in the sacred pageant
passing in the body of the building. As is the habit in Italy almost from the
time of weaning, these little rascals are abandoned gamblers, and the most
unholy emotions are distending their small bosoms while they rattle the dice-box,
examine their hands, or display the winning card. The one who does this in
the present instance happens to have taken a kneeling posidon, but his knees
are not the knees of humility — rather of unholy exultation. His opponent, a
seemingly older but not a better player, has dashed his hand of cards in a
fury on the ground, where the polished thurifer drags its chain and forgets to
smoke in the preoccupation of the hour. A sketch of manners like this, caught
on the fly by one who knows the secrets behind the scenes, gives more of an
idea of Italy than can be had from many a book of travel — nay, even from
many an actual tour, blindly prosecuted at the heels of a routine courier.
As a pendant to this boyish comedy we are glad to be able to give
another, where the humors of boy-life are depicted by so eminent a master as
Wilkie. Our steel-plate shows to perfection the rich expression and beautiful
grouping and light and shade of Wilkie's "Boys digging for a Rat," which the
London Royal Academy was generous enough to spare for our grand com-
memoration. The reputation of Sir David Wilkie, the next great artisdc
humorist after Hogarth, is built upon a long succession of admirable works,
and not upon a single example like the present one. His keen eye for
character, his wholesome happy temperament, the kind family temper which
distinguishes his humorous scenes, and the more artistic qualities of good color
and excellent composition, have made him a household-word, and the engravings
from his pictures household ornaments, wherever English art is known. Of his
pleasant, innocent, scrupulous personal character, the reminiscences of Ha)'don
and Leslie give the most agreeable glimpses. The painting sent to this country
as a specimen is about twelve by fourteen inches in size, and is agreeably
toned by age into a dim but powerful harmony. Our readers can observe
from the highly-finished steel-plate how richly blended are the shadows, how
soft the gradations. The group of little huntsmen is charming for character
and naivete. How natural is the attitude of the child on all fours on the around
£. iiT.-rny
A Christian Martyr in the Reign of Diocletian,
FINE ART.
125
by the wall ! How the white dog in the foreground relieves against the shadowy
interior, and how animated is his attitude ! This was the genuine, legitimate
scene de vicenrs of fifty years ago, before the strained ingenuity of Diisseldorf
artists had made painting a mere vehicle for obligatory and cheap sensations.
With Wilkie and Hogarth we laugh, or feel the stress of pity, all in a genuine
F. A. Bossuet, Pinx.
Rome — the Bridge and Caslle of St. Angela.
inartificial way; with most of the modern ge^ire painters we are sensible of the
creaking of the machinery, and our laughter, though extorted by real dramatic
skill, is begrudged and quickly checked.
A fine subject by Mr. Howard Roberts gives us the opportunity to say a
word for the beneficial results some of our artists are receiving from study in
France. The teaching of French professors is above all technical in its nature.
126 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
The teaching of Italy is only an "influence in the air." The young sculptor
who establishes himself in the Eternal City or Florence imbibes delicious ideas
of the poetry of the antique, "the beauty that was Greece and the glory that
was Rome ;" but he usually gets litde instruction of a lofty order, and is often
seen struggling for the rest of his life — "full of mammoth thoughts," as the
girl was at whom Hawthorne laughed. In Paris, on the contrary, there is the
intelligence that has resolved into a system the best art-teaching of the whole
world. The student there learns that felicity in many sorts of technic which
makes him able thereafter to master whatever he has it in him to express.
Our fine steel-plate of Mr. Roberts's statue entitled "La Premiere Pose," or
"The Model's First Sitting," indicates the peculiar sort of excellence attained
after faithful French study. The peculiar subject being granted, the figure is
highly meritorious in artistic qualities. The French distinguish works of this
character from historical subjects or traits of character, by the term ''academic,"
or an academical study; that is to say, a conscientious reproduction of some
living figure, where faithful adherence to nature is more the object sought than
pathos or humor or dignity. A good academic study, however, may easily
include a decree of interest in the situation, and this is the case with the statue
before us. We cannot help sympathizing a little with this poor girl, driven by
poverty to exposure in a painter's atelier. Was it not the gifted author of
"The Sparrowgrass Papers" who had a tender little story of the emigrant girl,
eno-ag-ed to be married to an honest road-mender of her own ereen island,
who when work was scant)' consented to unveil her perfect form in the studio
of an old ardst who respected her, and helped her at last to marry the man
of her choice ? The academic of Mr. Roberts suggests some such delicate
story. As we stud)' the features we fancy the case of a girl rather saucy and
scatter-brained by nature, who until the terrible ordeal is proposed scarcely
knows the sacredness of her womanhood : a situation at first sight simply bad
may thus be salutary in awakening the life of a dormant good. If this rattle-
pated grisette, who now perhaps feels a modesty she was hardly conscious of
when clothed, will keep at the height of virtuous sentiment she has now attained,
she will be saved to society. It is well known that many of the female models
of the European studios are good girls, who bare their forms to the artist as
innocently as to the physician, who take the exceptional situation without abusing
?lst
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S DllDCHB]NO
ILAFRlEMIEPilE POgE
U-S.Intsmational Exhibton 1876,
GEBBIE & BARRIE
FINE ART.
127
its temptations, and who often marry well and live on respectably. The dazzling
social position a professional model may emerge into is instanced in the case
of Lady Hamilton, who (though not the best specimen of the dignity of the
profession) was long the favorite exemplar for Romney the painter. The
technical qualities of Mr. Roberts's work, the highest perhaps of any among
the American statuary, are, however, what we wish particularly to point out.
From top to toe the resemblance to vital palpitating life is perfect; the firmness
of those parts of the flesh which are in tension, the pendant look of those
which are relaxed, the proportions, the system of lines and general cast of the
figure, are hardly to be enough admired. Very expressive is the muscular
action of the drawn-up legs, showing just as much contraction as is to be seen
under the adipose padding of female flesh. We fancy we detect in our
engraving, though most carefully and successfully copied from the original, a
certain look of pettiness about the head, and undue length of the foot. This
kind of trouble will often get into the most careful drawing after a statue, and
one the most carefully measured; it is one of the superstitions of the art of
design, a surmised annoyance that the most convincing proof will not remove.
Our engraving certainly is not big-footed or litde-headed, though it may seem
to look so ; and Mr. Roberts's statue is certainly small-footed, as any of its
admirers will testify ; but a local play of light will frequently play such a trick
on the most accurately designed figure in a drawing or photograph. The
harmony of lines in the present statue is singularly good ; although the play
of all the limbs is so free, the beautiful creature fills a nearly perfect oval.
The most advanced criticism of the day was freely extended to this figure while
Mr. Roberts was modeling it in Paris, both for correction and approval. From
such sagacious eyes as have watched its progress, no serious technical fault
could well escape; and an unusual amount of toilsome study on the side of
the artist and of cramping inconvenience on that of the young women who
successively sat for the part, were required to turn out so finished a specimen.
On page 56 we give a representation of Mr. Randolph Rogers's marble
figure of Ruth, a statue which made the artist's reputation, and of which the
repetitions adorn some of the most tasteful American homes. The lovely
Moabite, "heart-sick amid the alien corn," kneels to Boaz on the barley-field
of that good Jew. Across her arm lies a handful of ripened ears, and she
128
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
looks up half desolate and half hopeful, as his words of
wistful ear. Her
lieht tunic falls from
one rounded shoul-
der, as the hand,
outstretched to pick
a stalk of grain, is
arrested in surprise
at the beneficent
invitation. Let not
the visitor, who
pauses in admira-
tion before this fair
marble, forget that
Ruth is especially
interesting as die
only heathen
woman introduced
into the ancestry
of Christ! and that
the scene is Beth-
lehem, where the
stars that Ruth
watched in her fa-
mous night of vigil
were after-
wards re- ^
placed by
the dazzle
of that mir-
acle- star
which came
the tomb of St. Rosalia, which will give him power to
him, until his better impulse warns him to break the
■ /-■.u
kindness fall upon her
"and stood over
the place where the
young child lay."
A very old le-
gend of Normandy
is illustrated in the
powerful and ro-
mantic picture by
Roberto Fontana,
of Milan, copied in
our engraving on
page 121. The
painting is called
"The Evocation of
Souls," and repre-
sents an incident in
the myth of Rob-
ert, duke of Nor-
mandy, v.hose wild
ife and irregular
impulses caused
him to be named
"ie Diabld' Per-
suaded by the
phantoms
of the wick-
ed nuns,
he is about
to pluck
the magic
bough from
paralyze all who oppose
branch and put himself
L. C. G. dc BeiUf.. Pinx.
On the Edge of the Forest.
I30 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
in the way of salvation. Scribe, who wrote the libretto on which is based the
"Robert" of Meyerbeer, has not been able to give much coherence to an anti-
quated and inconsistent fable. Robert, the offspring of the fiend and an unhappy
mother, arrives in Palermo, and falls in love with the Princess of Sicily. His
diabolical father, in human disguise, accompanies him, and, after stripping the
young prodigal of wealth, prestige, honor, and every advantage by which he
could reasonably appeal to the princess, incites him to gain her by witchcraft.
The great incantation scene, whose beginning the picture represents, takes place
near the tomb of. Saint Rosalia, that patroness of Sicily whose statue even now
overlooks the Mediterranean from the summit of Mount Pellegrino. The con-
vent bequeathed by Saint Rosalia to the brides of heaven has become the scene
of profanity and wickedness, where renegade nuns offer incense to evil deities.
At the summons of Robert's fiend-father, the wicked dead novices rise from
their tombs, and with bewildering dances lead the infatuated knight to the tomb
of Saint Rosalia and the tempting branch. The preparations for this orgie
occupy the picture of Signor Fontana ; directly these beaudful and alluring
forms, half nuns and half bayaderes, will be mingled with horrible phantoms
and monsters from the witches' sabbath, and awful thunders will peal over the
scene as the magic branch breaks. Robert, however, will not be ultimately
lost ; after the accommodating manner of legends, he will be recalled to virtue
by the opportune reveladon of his mother's dying testament, bidding him avoid
the seductions of the audacious fiend who, having been robbed of his bride by
heaven, wishes to pluck his son down to an immortality of evil companionship
below. The princess, too, will be saved for Robert, who will marry her with
theatrical pomp at the close of the fourth act, in the cathedral of Palermo.
The unpresentable papa will sink beneath the stage, with a flash of red fire,
and his orphan will live respectably ever after. In the engraving after Fontana,
our readers will admire the graceful grouping of the alluring nuns, the well-
marked hesitancy of Robert, brought on in the distance by the fiend, the weird
beauty of the landscape which represents the cemetery clustered around the
crumbling statue of the sainted Rosalia; it is a skillful assemblage of graceful
ideas, with just enough of theatrical formality remaining to suggest to opera-
goers that the painter's conception originated in scenic light and music.
"Checkmate next Move," of which we give an elaborate engraving on pages
FINE ART. 131
90 and 91, is a very carefully finished painting by John Calcott Horsley, R. A.,
lent to the Exhibition by Thomas Jessop, Esq. Some of our readers may
recollect that in the only large and important exhibition of paintings of the
English school ever previously made in America — the one which was opened
in New York and Philadelphia shortly before the war of secession, — the prin-
cipal attraction was a very large picture of Prince Henry trying on the crown
of his sleeping father. Mr. Horsley was the author of that paindng, as well
as of three contributions to our Centennial, the best of which we select for
illustration. It is a picture which explains itself The costumes indicate the
period of Charles I, and in that epoch, within a beautiful old chamber, before
the troubles brought upon feudalism by Cromwell, occurs a peacekil scene of
aristocratic life. The mistress of the house has "checkmated" her elderly visitor,
who has laid aside his hat and sword to engage in a tranquil game with her
before the fireside; and in the distance, her fair daughter, demurely knitting at
a work-table, has just as effectually "checkmated" his son, who bends over the
maiden with a rapt air which tells that with him at present all the game is up.
The latter manoeuvre is intelligently watched by a page, through the cracks of
a screen which incloses him as he polishes the glasses which have entertained
the party. Mr. Horsley has defined the situation with great tact and humor,
while the excessive finish of his painting makes it a curiosity of manipulation.
"The Youthful Hannibal" is a bronze group of an exceptional quality.
After counting with unconquerable dejection the innumerable figures of pretty
lasses and trivial matrons, the offspring of an enervated sentiment, it was
grateful to the visitor to find the department of Italian sculpture disdnguished
by a work of so much energy, originality and fire. This spirited production,
which we represent on page 89, is modeled by the Cavaliere Prospero d'Epinay,
of Rome. The lean and agile Hannibal, wearing that tress over the ear with
which certain tropical tribes of antiquity defined the period of youth — and
wearing nothing else — is represented as a child in years though a man in
courage, as he combats with sinewy arms an enormous eagle Avhose span is
far greater than his own. Without weapons, without defence against the talons
of the bird, he engages in a primitive struggle, striving with both hands to
strangle the neck, and keep the cruel beak away from his eyes. The chevalier
has been successful in every part of his composition : in the eagle, the general
132-
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
sense of roughened feathers, in the highest dishevelment, flutters over the whole
impression of the action, but does not conceal the lines of power and fierce-
134 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
ness in the mad bird's attack ; tlie agitated feathers, skillfully cast in the metal
with lavish undercutting, form a background to the lithe limbs of the boy, with
young lean muscles in the highest tension, and a tine proud posture. The head
is full of character and promise. In the infancy of races, nothing is more
common tlian these hand-to-hand encounters ot defenceless man with Nature
in all her armor. Millions of young savages have met the fierce creatures of
the wilderness with this perfection of courage, and with this pitiful disadvan-
tage ; a great many must fail ; those are the tortunate, the elite, who emerge
from the struafofle and become heroes.
As if to show that nothing in nature is be)ond the powers of Italian
texture-carving, another sculptor sends an eagle in marble to compete with
d'Epinay's eagle of bronze. Of course the difficulty of undercutting is still
greater in stone than in metal, yet Signor Innocente Pandiani, a Milanese artist,
shows an "Eagle and Turkey" (engraved by us on page 116), which seem
made up of snowy feathers that a breath would cause to vibrate. Those of
the carrier-pigeon in the "Telegram of Love" (page 32), and of the plumes in
"rAfricaine" (page 40), as well as the hair of the latter figure and of several
others, show the e.xtreme ingenuit)' of Italian carvers in suggesting texture
without unnecessary tool-work. Pandiani's pair of enormous birds is imposing
and artistic ; the turkey, who has had his own days of importance, and has
spread his suit of scale-armor valiantly in many a morning's sunshine, now
meets his master ; he raises his head rather in appeal than in resistance ; the
duel is too unequal, and the eagle's kindest act will be the stroke that deprives
the poor carpet-knight of consciousness.
The winter scene which is engraved on page 129 is from a painting by
AI. de Bellee, of Paris, which attracted attention by its fidelity to nature and
harsh but wholesome truth. The raw, inhospitable aspect of a French farm in
winter is touched to perfection. "There is but one cloud in the sky" (to use
the words of Currer Bell), "but it spreads from pole to pole." The thatched
roofs of the grange are covered with an even coat of soft clinging snow, and
the rare passers-by trudge sullenly through the white sponge of the foot-path.
Overhead the trees, with the beautiful mystery of their branch-work stripped
and revealed, float upward through the dim sky into infinite reticulation, like
seaweed in an aquarium. Here is not the wholesome, lusty vigor of a rich
FINE ART. 135
powdering storm such as is depicted in Whittier's "Snowbound," but a damp,
ciiilling', sullen imprisonment of life-forces, such as makes winter the bane of
warm climates. The smokeless chimneys, indicating that the farmer's wife has
taken no pains to supply an antidote to the depressing weather, is another
character-touch, and indicates the helpless misery in which French and Italian
peasants live out the cold season.
The German school furnishes an interesting and spirited scene in the com-
position of "Luther Intercepted," by Count Von Harach, of Berlin, of which
we give the engraving on page 103. The incident, which at first sight looks
dangerous for Luther, is really the means ot his salvation. It shows the
means taken by the Elector of Saxony to protect, by a show of violence, the
outspoken and uncompromising reformer. After the Diet of Worms, April 26,
1 521, Luther left that city, having been condemned by Charles V and a majority
of the Council. In a forest traversed by Martin and his companion, their wagon
was stopped by armed horsemen in masks, who conveyed the reformer to the
mountain castle of Wartburg. In this inaccessible retreat, sate from all moles-
tation, the immortal thinker wrote those tracts which revolutionized Europe,
causing hundreds of monks to renounce their vows and enter into the bonds
of matrimony, and shaking the authority of the Pope with those sturdy argu-
ments which still form the bulwark of Protestantism. Count Harach's picture
well represents the confusion, the passion, the tempestuous energy of an unex-
pected attack. The intrepid reformer betrays no alarm, although to him the
rencounter must for the moment seem fatal. The cross-lights and dappled
shadows dardng through the noble forest seem to add to the impression of
contradiction, confusion and cross purposes created by the peculiar circumstances
of the ambush.
Another Protestant subject is furnished by a pupil of the Munich school,
Mr. G. F. Folingsby, in the fine composition seen on pages 106 and 107. Mr.
Folingsby, though exhibiting as a true disciple of Piloty and the Munich nursery,
is a German by adoption rather than by origin, having been born under the
skies of Britain. In his excellent group we see the well-ordered balance, the
stately dignit)^ the classical decorum, of the academy founded by Cornelius.
Lady Jane and her duenna form a monumental pair on the left, the lines of
their drapery sweeping towards the centre, while their calm sobriety is balanced
136
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
by the single
figure of the
prelate, chancel-
lant, tottering,
baffled, and
worsted, and
seeming to re-
volve on itself
in the despair
of moral defeat.
The scene
throws up into
beautiful light
the fragile firm-
ness of that
poor girl who
was queen but
of a day, yet
empress of eter-
nal truth. No
arguments, per-
suasions or
menaces could
shake that grasp
of holy convic-
tion whicli was
her stay amid
the abandon-
mentofmenand
the prospect of
approaching
death. It is well
known that no
weapons than most of her contemporaries, successfully
Pietre Ctarturuf, if.
/ 'jnit^'.
efforts were
spared by the
Catholic party
to shake her
Protestant faith,
and secure to
the Romish
Church the
jewel of her
beautiful soul.
Day by day, as
she endured the
c o n fi n ement
that preceded
her execution,
some emissary
of Rome, Bish-
op Gardiner or
the Abbot
Takenham, dis-
turbed her pri-
vacy and at-
tempted to
wrest her faith
from Protest-
antism by argu-
ments, flatteries
and menaces of
eternal perdi-
tion. But the
fair bride, better
armed even
with literary
resisted her opponents
FINE ART.
137
by reference to the Scriptures or to the early fathers of Christianity. The
beautiful picture of Mr. Folingsby shows her playing her part of a feminine
Luther before the embodied power of the Papacy, with an authority made
awful by the certainty of swiftly-approaching death.
Another product of German art, by F. Reichert, of Dresden, is devoted
to celebrating a sister craft which shares with that of painting the privilege of
charming and enlightening the world. In the composition entitled "The First
A AU^nctnn. PiHX.
^/ter Paul P<^tU
The Yo7inp- Bull.
Proof" (page 132), we are shown the nervous moment when printing was to
be judged for success or unsuccess in its destined task of supplanting the pen.
In the centre of a group of three, between the workman who furnishes the
mechanic power and the aristocratic man of letters who decides the victory,
Gutenberg draws out from the press the first sheet made eloquent with printers'
ink. The fate of civilization is in his hand. Beside him, holding a stately
written missal, is the representation of the old order of things, the patient
schoolman, whose clerks bend their backs over the weary desk, and elaborate
n
j1. A \cs.'ti}n. Pinx.
Mountain Git
lencoe.
HO THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8y6.
in a course of months the work which the new agent will surpass in an hour.
To the inventor, all is yet doubtful. Will the printed page take the place of
the vellum manuscript? The old scholar at his elbow doubts it still. But
within the breast of the innovator speaks that inward monitor which convinces
him that the novel power is the stronger, and that, in the words of a modern
writer of eloquence, ''tJiis will overcome that" — ''ceci tuera ceia.'"
Shakespeare having created the forest of Arden, that ideal no-man's-land
where the impossible is the practicable, we are under obligations to Mr. John
Pettie, of London, Royal Academician, to have realized for the eye one of the
fantastic scenes of the sylvan republic. His picture, of which we give an
excellent steel-plate engraving, shows the interview between Touchstone, a
court-clown just wise enough to be spoiled, and Audrey, a peasant girl just
silly enough to be honest. The love-scene between these well-mated grown
children is of the truest pastoral-comical : —
Touchstone. Come .ipace, good Audrey, I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. An<l how, Audrey? m\\ I the man
yet ? Doth my simple feature content you ?
Audrey. Your features ! Lord warrant us ! what features ?
Xoitckstone. I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, w.os among the Goths. . . .
Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical !
Audrey. I do not know what poetical is: is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?
Golden proverbs of similar delicious un-wisdom drop every moment from
the lips of the unconscious Audrey, as she stands for all time the embodiment
of rustic idiocy, with the deep forest of Arden for a background. Clasping
her shepherd's wand in both hands, and looking straight into the wicked eyes
of the jester with smiling vacuity of intellect, she lets fall such kindred pearls
of speech as: "Well, I am not fair, and therefore I pray the gods make me
honest;" or, "I am not a slut, although I thank the gods I am foul." Shakes-
peare's most unpermissible, wrong-headed puns — goats and Goths, capricious and
capi'a — stud the lines, still wild with the impulse of Rosalind's tameless talk.
Touchstone, brought up In palaces, puzzles the poor shepherdess with his
pedantic follies and literary allusions. We see him bowing before her, courdy,
mocking and malicious, his fingers on his chin, his bauble under his arm. Mr.
Pettie has succeeded in making more real for us one of the inimitably realistic
scenes of Shakespearean comedy.
v^
, v-^
A
:-ii
Q
FINE ART. 141
The drama of life in the Elizabethan age has seldom been better depicted
than by Leslie — first in the "May-day," of which we give an engraving on
page 95, and afterwards in many an illustration of the Shakespearean plays.
This artist was, in fact, a sort of pioneer in that style of romantic painting,
with strict attention to historical costume and accessories, now so much in vogue.
His "May-day in the time of Queen Elizabeth" was generously lent to the
American Exhibition by its owner, John Naylor, Esq., of Lei^hton Hall. It was
painted in 1821, the year in which Leslie was made Associate of the Royal
-Academy ; it won him great honor at the Exhibition of that season, as well as
the pleasure of an acquaintance with Sir Walter Scott, who called twice at the
studio to see it, and suggested the group of archers shoodng at the butts. It
went to the Academy with the following extract as a motto : —
"At Paske began our Morrice, and ere Pentecost our May:
Then Robin Hood, litell John, Friar Tuck and Marian deftly play,
And Lord and Ladie gang till Kirke, with lads and lasses gay."
Of this picture and the incident of Sir Walter's calling, Leslie writes thus
to his sister. Miss Eliza Leslie, the Philadelphia magazinist : " My friends are
sanguine as to its success, and I myself consider it the best thing I have done.
Sir Walter Scott has been lately in London, and came twice to see it when in
progress ; the first visit I had taken the liberty to request, but the second,
which you may believe gratified me not a little, was of his own proposing. He
found fault with nothing in my picture, but suggested the introducdon of a few
archers, a hint of which I took advantage." The principal pair of figures in
the foreground are a provincial beauty from a country manor-house, and a
fantastic dandy of the day. This affected gentleman is meant to be a Euphuist,
that is, a pedant fully capable of talking in the style of John Lilly's " Euphues
and his England," a work of whose philological influence we are told by Blount,
"that beauty at court which could not parley Euphuisme was as litde regarded
as she which now there speaks not French." The country belle dmidly accepts
the Euphuist's hand for the dance, hardly comprehending the overstrained
phrases (like those of Holofernes in "Love's Labour's Lost") with which he
solicits the honor. At the right hand stands a proud dowager of the period,
accompanied by her jester, who slyly draws the figure of an ass on tlie buckler
of a man-at-arms. Around the may-pole circles the train of maskers, Robin
142 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
Hood and Maid Marian, Litde John and Friar Tuck, not forgetdng Hobby-
horse and Dragon. Behind the. pole is the bower containing tiie Queen of
May. At the extreme left, watching the dance, is the black-robed schoolmaster,
his bundle of birches forgotten in his hand, and his sour face brightened with
a temporary smile. The landscape, which is very beautiful, bears a larger pro-
portion to the scope of the picture than was usual with the artist. Leslie
followed West, as the second gift made by this city to the art-circles of England.
He was the son of Robert Leslie, who came to Philadelphia from Maryland in
1786; himself born in 1794, he went to England in 181 1, returned to America
to take the position of drawing- teacher at West Point, which he filled in 1833
and 1844, and then went back to painting in London, where he died on
May 5, 1859.
The grand old Dutch school of the seventeenth century was revealed to
the visitors at our International Fair by a series of four large copies of its
masterpieces, which an Amsterdam artist, S. Altmann, was obliging enough to
send over, in addition to some original subjects of his own. Rembrandt's
"Master's of the Drapers-," Van der Heist's "Banquet of the Civil Guard," and
Franz Hals's " Masters of the Kloveniers" were accordingly seen in imposing
repetitions the same size as the originals ; and many visitors of limited oppor-
tunities, whose idea of a Dutch picture was that of something excessively
diminutive and highly wrought, were amazed at the scale, the freedom, the
sketchy expressiveness, the photographic reality of those grand pages of history.
Besides the three we have just mentioned, the artist dispatched his copy of the
masterpiece of Paul Potter, "The Young Bull," the pride of the Hague; of
this we give on page 137 a spirited little study, reversed from left to right for
the convenience of the eneraver. The voune eenius who achieved this mas-
terly work painted it in 1647, when only twenty-two years old; and he died
seven years after, leaving the world to wonder what he would have become if
his life had been prolonged to the usual span. This precocious lad found time
to paint over a hundred pictures of mark, and to leave behind him four books
of sketches, which the Berlin cabinet of engravings retains in their original
boar-skin bindings. His subjects are animals and shepherds, suitably set in" a
flat, sunny Holland landscape. The reader who consults our engraving of
•'The Young Bull" must remember that the original portrait is about the size
FINE ART.
143
Enrico Braga .
Oeofafra.
of nature, and endowed with an energy and vehemence that makes it pleasanter
to meet, for nervous people and ladies, than the live subject w^ould be.
144 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Enrico Braga, an industrious sculptor of Milan, sent over so great a
number of works of uncontested originality, that he can well afford to have
the master-motive of his "Cleopatra" (page 143) assigned where it belongs —
to the painting, namely, by the French artist, Gerome. The posture of the
queen, and of the servant Apollodorus, are substantially the same as in the
picture, whose statuesque grouping was so peculiarly adapted for the purposes
of sculpture, that a French bronze-founder, as well as our Italian artist in marble,
has produced a repetition of it in statuary. Gerome's painting is now owned
by a California gentleman ; and as he sent no canvas to the Exhibition, we are
glad to find a reflection of his skill thus more or less directly displayed. The
incident is that where Cleopatra, being at war with her brother Ptolemy Dio-
nysius, had herself conveyed to Julius Caesar, then in Alexandria; she was
brought safely to the dictator through the armies of her foes, concealed in a
roll of tapestry which was offered as a tribute to Caesar, and which Apollo-
dorus carried in and opened at his feet. This contrasted pair preserves the
posture of Gerome's group — the slave, who parts the drapery, so supple and
submissive; the girl, standing, and leaning on his shoulder as on a piece of
furniture, already so queenly, confident and regal. Gerome's is one of the few
French pictures celebrated in English poetry; in "Fifine at the Fair," Mr.
Browning strings a half-score of verses in honor of the painter's heroine,
beginning :-
'See Cleopatra! bared, th' cncire and sinuous wealth
O' the shining shape!"
and dwelling appreciatively on the successive beauties of the form, " traced
about by jewels," and perfect from head to foot in plastic elegance —
" Vet, o'er that white and wonder, a Soul's predominance
r the head, so high and haught — except one thievish glance
, From back of oblong eye, intent to count the slain !"
Guarnerio, whose " Forced Prayer" we have already represented, sent also
a group of two figures, called "Vanit)'," whose modish grace throws into strong
contrast the regal calm of such a work as the "Cleopatra." We present an
engraving on page 136. The attempt here is not so much to secure the sym-
pathy of the spectator by depth or subtlet)' of conception, as to dazzle him by
reckless difficulties of manipulation and by the conquered suavity of kneaded
FINE ART.
145
marble. A ball-room belle, whose flesh seems made of swans' down rather
than stone, is winding a necklace around her breast, and admiring the jewels
in a mirror which a little girl holds admiringly before her. Here we have
Signor Guarnerio, whose range is as wide as Garrick's was in acting, at the
opposite pole
from his classical
style, as revealed
in die "Aruns
shootino- Camil-
la." Every touch
in the "Vanity"
is softened in
consonance with
a boudoir sub-
ject, and the
group is rococo
— luscious, over-
tender and ener-
vated. The as-
tonishing skill
which can thus
make Carrara
lookas flexible as
whipped cream,
we willingly con-
cede; but we con-
sider that many
such successes as
F Barsaghi, Sc
Vanity.
this would lead
Art to a state of
effeminate nerve-
lessness.
In the Nine-
teenth Room of
the Art-Annex,
marked simply
with a contempt-
uous "Unknown"
in their cata-
logues, many vis-
itors may have
noticed a statue
of ru ral grace
and originality,
which they will
recognize from
our sketch on
page 105. This
image of "The
Young Grape-
gatherer," which
floured if we
mistake not at the Vienna Exposition before showing itself at ours, is the work
of another Italian artist, Signor Giulio Branca. The posture is entirely uncon-
ventional ; the youthful vintner, retaining in liis left hand a cluster he has
gathered, reaches the other hand to the highest part of the trellis within his
reach, with a gesture which stiffens out his whole figure to a perpendicular
straight line. He wears the simple breeches and caniicia of a lazzarone of
Cairo Fruit Girl.
148 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Naples, and his head hangs away back between his shoulder-blades with the
blessed flexibility of youth and a nation of acrobats. An unusual amount of
supporting marble, cleverly shredded into grape-leaves and bark, is allowed by
the sculptor to remain beside his figure. Something unconventional and fearless
about this aspiring youth makes us wish we could have seen more of the work
of Signor Branca.
The story of Francesca di Rimini, the most touching in all the pages of
Dante, is interpreted by Cabanel in the picture we engrave on page 113. The
event which lent an extraordinary depth of tenderness even to the tenderness
of Aliehieri was one well known to him amono- the traditions of his home, and
flowed into his verse with the lava heat of personal sorrow. Francesca, daughter
of Guido de Polenta, lord of Ravenna, was given in marriage to a harsh, ill-
favored bridegroom, Lanciotto, son of Malatesta, lord of Rimini. His brother
Paolo, unhappily for himself and for all, was graceful, gallant and accomplished,
and while yet a young bride the fair Francesca, with Paolo, was put to death
by the jealous husband. Francesca's inimitably-told love scene, consequent upon
reading, in the romance, of Lancelot and Guinevere's kiss, we give in Dante's
numbers as translated by Byron : —
" We read one day for pastime, seated nigh.
Of Lancelot, how love possessed him too;
We were alone, quite unsuspiciously;
But oft our eyes met, and our cheeks in hue
All o'er discolored by that reading were,
But one tiling only wholly us o'erthrew ;
"When we read the long-sighed for smile of her
To be thus kissed by such devoted lover,
He, who from me shall be divided ne'er.
Kissed my mouth, trembling in the act all over!
Accursed be the book and he who wrote !
That day no further leaf we did uncover!"
Cabanel represents a close, richly-carved and decked chamber in the castle
of Rimini. A reading-desk is at the left — at the right a curtained door, through
which Lanciotto, still grasping his reeking sword, looks upon what he has done.
The young bride sinks back from the lectern, the book of Lancelot falling
from her fingers ; and Paolo, his hand pressed upon the wound that has trans-
fixed them both, withdraws his arm from her neck, and rolls to the floor at her
1 "•.i.l:«.--fiV'i
s
<f,
FINE ART 149
feet. The story is complete, and painted with pathos and eloquence. We
believe that doubt has been cast upon the authenticity of the picture exposed
at the Centennial : a young American artist, familiar with the replica or duplicate
ot the painting preserved in France, made his suspicions known through the
columns of the Evening Post. Our own impression on examining the picture
(which was not contributed by the artist, but lent in good faith by the owner,
Mrs. A. E. Kidd), was contrary to that of IVIr. Bridgman. The touch appeared
to us to be in the style of M. Cabanel, but not his best style. French artists
prepare duplicate examples of a great many of their works, sometimes of the
same size as the original, sometimes differing in that respect ; and we are sorry
to say, that when the repliche are intended to be sold at a great distance, they
are not always careful to put their very best powers in action. This concession
made, which does not forbid the painter to have kept by him another and even
a better picture of Francesca, we believe the reader may feel that he is enjoying
a veritable work of the author of the "Venus" and "Florentine Poet."
The position of P. T. Rothermel in American art is somewhat anomalous.
He is a colorist, insisting on being a historical painter. We would have him
saved from all the drudgery of inventing realistic situations, and set to paint
color-dreams divorced as much as possible from actuality. Born with the subtle
sense of tone-harmony of an Eugene Delacroix, he is not much more accurate
than Delacroix in the pedantry of anatomic detail, the rectitude of architectural
and constructive lines. Capable of flinging together lovely groups, sumptuous
costumes, and contrasted flesh-tints in the manner of the late painter Diaz, he
is pained and puzzled, as Diaz would have been, when a perverse and logical
generation asks him for the historic warrant of just such a group, the justifica-
tion of this or that expression, gesture or attitude. It has always seemed to
us that when a great colorist is born to art, the world should be thankful for
the rare and exquisite boon, and allow him that isolation and freedom from
care which will keep his gift pure. In practical America, a color-poet has to
be his own man-of-all-work, vexing himself with the hard drudgery of drawing,
expression, dramatic propriety, and historical truth — details which he might be
often saved from by the labors of the commonest illustrating draughtsman. He
is like a musical genius forced to write the libretti of his own operas. In
countries more finely cultured, such a poet is allowed to revel in his proper
I50 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
talent, and feats outside of it, or faults in other departments, are not scruti-
nized. We have heard Rothermel criticised, and even with acerbity ; artists of
the Delacroix order especially invite the animadversions of wiseheads ; but we
confess, on those occasions, the party we pitied was the critic, not Rothermel.
What is certain is, that when he has sent works to the Paris salon, they have
been hung in conspicuous places as noticeable acquisitions. When in Rome,
about a dozen years ago, his rich color-dreams were highly appreciated. Even
distant and luxurious Russia, true child of Asia in an inborn and rapid appre-
ciation of harmonies of tint, owns and prizes a considerable number of his
paintings, selected in his Italian studio by Muscovite travelers of taste. A New
York connoisseur and expert said to us, "The secrets of composition, the balance
of light and shade, the effective contrast of tints, which other artists trj' for all
their lives and miss, Rothermel gets at once, without trying." This artist was
represented at Philadelphia by his enormous "Gettysburg," a Veronese-study
of grays; by his "Christian Mart}Ts," a series of exquisite stains and lovely
flesh-tints on a life-like scale; and by small cabinet gems like "The Trial of
Sir Henry Vane," lent by its owner, Mr. Claghorn, and in our opinion the
painter's chef d'cetivre. We give a steel-plate copy of this admirable work,
which for once is as perfect in dramatic sentiment as in color and chiaroscuro.
The subject is all the more interesting to Americans since Vane was for some
time a resident of New England, and narrowly missed being made a Colonial
governor. The splendid energy of his self-justification, when brought to trial
after the restoration of Charles II on the charge of treason, yields to the painter
one of the most striking situations in all the history of the martyrs of popular
rights. "His spirited defence served as an excuse for his execution," says Mr.
J. R. Green, in his "Short History of the English People." In the shameless
court of sycophants and jesters, the paid retainers of Versailles and effeminate
apes of Paris, Vane thundered with the eloquence of an age that had gone
before, the age of Pym and Hampden and Cromwell. Evidently this was a
toneue that must be stilled. "He is too dangerous a man to let live," said
Charles, with characteristic coolness, "if we can safely put him out of the way."
The masterly simplicit}- and dignity, the richness and beauty of Mr. Rothermel's
composition, worthy of the artist and the occasion, are partly revealed by our
engraving; the judicious contrast, arrangement and relief of the figures, the
152 THE INTERN-ATIONAL EXHIB ITION, 1876.
dark splendor of light and shade, are indicated ; but the painting glows with
a depth and vibration of color and living light which the burin cannot translate.
If but a single work were left to stake an artist's reputation and a national
fame upon, we wish it might be Rothermel's " Harry Vane."
Our readers may by this time have asked, with some little degree of doubt,
why so many Italian statues were described in this commentary. We have
alluded in earlier pages to specimens from the atelier of Guarnerio, Caroni,
Tantardini, Pozzi, Corti, Pandiani, Rosetti, Barzaghi, and Braga ; we have illus-
trated the masterpiece of D'Epinay (the "Young Hannibal") — the work of an
artist who, though born in Mauritius, is by residence and education a Roman ;
Branca's "Un Monello di Campagna," or "Youthful Grape-Gatherer," has traveled
from the Vienna Exhibition to grace the American World's Fair and our pages.
But few of these artists were ever previously heard of by our untraveled
readers. We are about to speak of other sculptors of Italy. To account for
such a seeming preference of one especial nation in a single branch of art, we
may properly suggest that the Italians did us the honor to show us a much
fuller exhibit of the national sculpture than did any other nation. It was there-
fore our duty, in order to give this exhibit its relative emphasis, to represent
its masterpieces in proportion. Besides the ambition, so flattering to America,
of these artists to be fully represented in Columbus's New World, as the
inheritors of the peerless sculpture of antiquit)', and the possessors of those
immemorial quarries that "teem with human form," there were accidental or
peculiar incentives added to this patriotic motive. The city where our Expo-
sition was held happened to have an Italian consul, Signor Viti, who has always,
like his father before him, felt for Italian sculpture the interest of a connoisseur
and a patron.
For another instance, there had happened to be a South American Exhi-
bition just preceding our own, from which the large contribution of Roman and
Milanese marbles naturally overflowed to ours. When to these circumstances
was added the genial determination of the Italians to favor America with a
royal display, a great emigration of the marble people of Latium was insured.
The cornucopia of old Rome, filled with stone men and women, was imme-
diately overturned upon America. Our cordial comrade, the public, having
listened to what we had to say of several of these shining ones, will please
s
\
154 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
hear of a tew more of the white visitors. We resume our discourse on Italian
art, taking for text our latest-engraved specimens — the steel-plates of Magni's
"Reading Girl" and Rosetti's "Steam," and the wood-cuts of Barzaghi's "Vanity"
(page 145), Guarnerio's "Vanity" (page 140) — an identity of titles showing how
the greatest minds tend alike towards the preacher's vanitas vanitatem — and the
"Apotheosis of Washington," by the same Guarnerio, whose "Forced Prayer"
is also to be seen on page 48. These selections rather aptly define certain
interesting tendencies in Italian sculpture; the "Washington," by its peculiar
treatment, indicates a school enamored of old classic traditions, yet willing to
treat them with a picturesque and decorative detail and chiaroscuro ; the world-
famous "Reading Girl" shows modern genre art exquisitely chastened by a
remnant of the old classic reserve and severity; and the figure of "Steam,"
with the two illustrations of "Vanity," exhibits that characteristically modern
boudoi}' art which is the peculiar invention, and in some of its instances the
pride, of contemporary Italian carvers.
Boudoir sculpture, however, though it now shows inventive touches that are
genuinely recent, is no new thing in Italy. What are Bernini's "St. Longinus,"
and Mochi's "St. Veronica," though they support the very dome of St. Peter's,
but boudoir statues? What do they display, in their pretty flutter and drawing-
room grace, but the mannerism of polite society, placed where we should look
to see the religious sincerity of nature? How does Bernini treat the Greek
myth of Daphne but in the spirit of a seventeenth-century drawing-room? It
is a glitter of dimpled flesh and curling laurel-leaves, as brilliant, and as bereft
of true emotion, as, ior instance, a poem of Dryden's on some classic subject.
It must be understood that since the day of Bernini, himself the very successor
of Michael Angelo, Italian sculpture has been constantly characterized by an
endeavor to play audacious tricks with the marble, or — more accuratel)' — to
develop modern sculpture away from the style of antique sculpture just as
freely as modern painting has been developed awaj' from the style of Greek
painting.
From what influence, then, do the gay, trifling, over-graceful works of
Rosetti and Barzaghi and Guarnerio — the "Steam" and "Electricity'," the childish
and the maidenly "Vanity," the "Washington" — proceed? They do not partake
of the great classic movement of Italian sculpture. They cannot be traced to
FINE ART. 155
the influence of Giovanni Dupre, of Pio Fedi, of Canova. Those artists have
given little to the world that is not distinctly classical in spirit — a careful
endeavor to continue antique sculpture in its own proper line. But Italy, since
the wild and reprehensible inventions of Bernini, has ever nourished a line of
romantic sculpture, running along with the classical line, and setting its traditions
at naught. From the time of Bernini, do we say? Nay, from long before.
Already, in his gates for the Baptistery at Florence, Ghiberti had attempted the
fascinating, dangerous experiment of making the chisel do the work of the
brush, and vying with the art of painUng in the elaborate luxury of its com-
positions, the narrative eloquence of its scenes, and its deftly calculated light
and shade. To see the daring originality of Ghiberti and Bernini produced to
its most startling limit, we may go to the family chapel of the dukes of Sangro
at Naples, the "Santa Maria della Pieta de' Sangri." Here, in a series of
works produced about the year 1766, we see the prototypes of all the amazing
devices which astonish us in the modern Italian marble. A statue of "Modesty,"
having the features of the mother of Raimondo di Sangro, is the original of
all the "vailed statuary" — the "Vailed Vestals," the "Vailed Brides," the "Bashful
Maidens," of the Italian studios. It represents the lady swathed in a long
drapery, with the features of the face and the body showing through the
apparently diaphanous material. This is by an eighteenth-century artist named
Corradini. In the same church is the "Man in the Net of Sin," or "Vice
Undeceived," by Oueiroli. The meshes of an actual marble net, surrounding
the body of the father of Raimondo, are cut out with incredible patience, knot
by knot and thread by thread, until the stone of Carrara actually stands out
transparently in the air, reduced to a reticulated cordage, around the human
form within. Another artist, Sammartino, has adorned the church with a figure
of the Dead Christ, lying on a splendid bed of Italian upholstery, and covered
with a sheet, whose adhesion to the skin by the sweat of death is mimicked
with fearful ingenuity, and the whole edifice is filled with these strange inven-
tions, including, over the door, a marble sculpture of a Di Sangro emerging
from an iron sculpture of a tomb. These carvers have in fact amused them-
selves with playing upon the character of marble as punsters play upon the
character of a word ; the more the essential sense of the thing is contradicted,
the prouder they seem to be. It is hardly wonderful that the compatriots of
156
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
p. Gttamerw, Sc,
Apotheosis of Washin^on.
these clever marble-workers should sometimes seek to continue the same line
of doubtful triumphs; and hence the visitors to the London World's Fair of
FINE ART. IS7
1862 were greeted with the wonderful group by Monti, "The Sleep of Death
and Dream of Life," wherein the marble represented to perfection the confusion
of a thin and transparent entanglement of drapery.
Thus the peculiar sculpture from Italy, which surprised so many visitors as
something entirely novel, with its particularized eye-lashes, flying hair and simu-
lated fabrics, we have shown to be the result of a whole succession of eminent
national artists — Ghiberti (who chiseled feathers and palm-trees), Bernini (whose
Daphne is a sculptured laurel-tree), the decorators of the Pieta church in Naples,
and Monti. '
The national sculpture was in fact committing itself to this rococo style,
when Canova, a man of sincere but weak classic feeling, introduced a counter-
acting tendency towards the antique spirit. If he had been stronger, he would
have left a deeper stamp ; but he was one of the false purists, one of the
pseudo-Augustuses of the first part of this century, the Wests, Davids and
Raphael Mengs. Nor did he ever have the advantage of studying from the
very best models — which, whatever the Italians and the guide-books may say,
are not to be found in Italy. When he saw the Elgin marbles late in life, he
declared that if it were not too late he would radically change his style.- He
belonged to the day when the Apollo Belvedere and Venus de' Medici were
praised and sonneteered as the summit of excellence, and when the Theseus,
lUyssus and Venus of Milo had not made their impression upon the schools.
But all this, tedious in length as it is, is but our introduction to the state-
ment of the condition of Italian sculpture at the present epoch, which is one
of revolution. The statement will be short, however, thoug-h the introduction
is prolix.
Take, as a very singular instance, Guarnerio, whose "Forced Prayer,"
"Maidenly Vanity" and "Apotheosis of Washington" we show by means of
engravings. Guarnerio is an art-centaur; he is half classic and half rococo;
he is part Bernini and part Canova. Thus in the single exhibit he made at
Philadelphia, he showed side by side the statue of "Aruns killing Camilla,"
which was as cold, correct and pseudo-Greek as it could possibly be, and the
"Washington," which was enveloped in a flutter of drapery and a cloud of
hair-powder like any portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud. In the "Aruns," the veins,
the creases and wrinkles, the accidents of humanity, were omitted, so, in an
Applicants
admission to a Casual Ward.
i6o THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
ultra-antique spirit, was the hair ; everything but the grand, broad masses of
the body was neglected, and the figure altogether was so intensely Greek that
it was Egyptian ! It was what Benjamin West and Louis David would have
made if they had been sculptors. The Washington, alongside, was a fly-away
work, full of merit in its way, but the offspring of a different sentiment. Who
could tell which represented the real conviction of Guarnerio as a sculptor, the
rococo "Washington," or the severe "Aruns"? The Americans, by-the-bye, did
not appreciate the statue of their chieftain, because the lower part of the bust
was finished off with a or-igrantic eagle. The more ignorant ones surmised that
it must be "Washington on a Lark!" It was hardly fair, however, to make
an Italian artist suffer for the average American's superb ignorance of things
classic and traditional. Guarnerio had seen a hundred times antique represen-
tations of the apotheosis, in which the emperor or hero was borne alolt by the
eagle of Jove. To cite a single example, which our reader can easily consult,
there is an "Apotheosis of Homer" engraved in Winckelmann, from a silver
vase of Herculaneum, in which the poet likewise emerges from the spread
wings of a great eagle; it may be seen in plate 21 of the Paris edition of
1789. To an Italian like our sculptor, familiar from infancy with this old author-
ized form of representing immortalit)', it was but an accepted use of metaphor,
and the adaptation of the American national bird for aquila yovis was graceful
and poetic. Leaving out of the question this complaint of the inappropriate-
ness of the symbol, in which we shall rather betray ignorance than penetration,
we may contemplate the "Washington" simply as a work of portraiture. In
this respect, then, we cannot refuse the sculptor very high praise ; the face, as
we have heard enemies of the statue acknowledge, is singularly good — one of
the best idealizations of the cast taken by Houdon that sculpture has ever
furnished ; the expression is paternal, benignant ; the attitude, with one hand
showing the Constitution on which we rest our liberties, is well conceived, and
shows Washington as the peacemaker, in which the warrior is merged.
Guarnerio's "Maidenly Vanit)'" is a work which we select rather to show
the possible extremes to which a school may go, than because we think it one
of the most beautiful, or one of the noblest, pieces of Italian carving. In this
instance the key-note of "Vanit}^" appropriate to the subject, is struck so per-
fectly that it reflects upon the general attractiveness of the group. The subject
FINE ART.
i6i
is vain, and the work is vain. In tlie opera, Marguerite adorns Iierself with
the jewels, and translates their light and color to music as she regards her
D Bii ngita St
pretty face in the glass. The present heroine is rather the chief figure of a
bath-room scene ; this fair flesh seems to have been just polished with the
i62 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
sponge and the napkin in order to relieve witli proper effect the glittering
hardness of the gems. It is a pure effort at Titianesque flesh-painting, in stone.
But, from the point of view at which the sculptor's aims were directed, how
perfect his success ! Given a purely boiidoir subject — a topic meant to please
sight as one of the five senses, and not as the key of the brain and the under-
standine — how well the caressing chisel has understood its task ! No snow
seems softer than those breadths of moulded marble ; the dimples, the swelling
contours, the soft pressure of flesh against flesh, are expressed with bewildering
subtlety. At the damsel's feet, even lazier than herself, leans a youthful assistant
with a mirror, a promising novice in this religion of the toilette. A pretty
future, forsooth, seems to open out before this tiny disciple, so early instructed
in the innermost secrets of the rites of Vanity! The little ministrant tends with
willing service upon the caprices of the riper beauty. But, as. we contemplate
the group and enter into its spirit, she hardly seems to tend alone; for all the
sylphs of the toilet, the little modish beings whom Pope imagined around the
fair form of Arabella Fermor, seem to be circling about and glancing in the air.
" Haste then, ye spirits, to your charge repair !
Her fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care;
The 'drops' to thee, BriUante, we consign.
And MomentiUa, let tlie walch be thine."
So completely does Guarnerio change his touch with the style he proposes
to illustrate, that we may notice his inconsistency in treating the iris of the eye,
among his various contributions Artists are divided about the proper rendering
of this important organ, the crucial difficulty of a statue. The purists in sculp-
ture usually treat the ball according to its actual shape, without noticing the
marked difference made by the iris and pupil ; such was the habit in the oldest
and strictest period of Greek art. The romanticists treat the organ as it would
be treated in a picture, using various devices to represent the blackness of the
pupil, the ring of the iris, and the little spark of reflected light which gives
intelligence to the organ. Guarnerio. now a purist and now a romanticist, treats
the eye of his "Aruns" as a plain ball, while in the "Washington," "Vanity"
and other figures, he uses the most ingenious devices to deepen the shadow
of the eyelashes, to sink the profundity of the pupil, and to make the glance
resemble that speaking one which we find in a good picture. We appreciate
FINE ART.
163
the skill, but we cannot but be struck with the apparent want of conviction on
the part of the sculptor. It is as if a painter should paint to-day in the style
Ch. Landelli. Piitx.
A Fellah Woman.
of Raphael, and to-morrow in the style of Watteau, according to the orders
he received.
i64 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
The fact is, the present art-generation is in a state of revolt in Italy. The
influence of Canova, whose right hand and chisel are presented to the worship
of the faithful in Venice, is palpably dying out. The last of his imitators was
Fedi, whose group of Polixena is installed in the public piazza of Florence, as
if worthy to share the same sun- ray that strikes upon the works of Michael
Angelo and Donatello. Dupre is too chastened and pure in style to suggest
the pagan animalism of the Greeks, and therefore can hardly be called a
classicist; but he does not belong either to the romantic school — the color of
Rubens and the Venetians is never suggested by his carving. His "Pieta," like
Raphael's Sistine Madonna, is a work of pure holiness, transcending all schools,
and breathing an atmosphere of its own. Being an ideal, and therefore classical
subject, however, its intense life makes it seem realistic and " romantic." His
monument to Cavour, being a subject of realistic character, a portrait-study,
seems by contrast somewhat classic and severe ; thus an artist who soars above
schools seems in turn, by the force of contrast, and the sheer difference of his
work from what the conventional spectator looks for, to lean to the opposite
style. The great inventor of the modern pictorial, or romantic, or realistic
school in contemporary Italy, is Professor Vincenzio Vela, of Milan, a pupil of
Cacciatori. His chisel was represented at the Philadelphia Exhibition by "The
First Sorrow," a charming group of a girl and sick kitten, and his "Dying
Napoleon," or "Gli Ultimi Giorni di Napoleone," is now in the Corcoran Gal-
lery at Washington. Vela's style has been misunderstood, because, rather than
represent nature as the Greeks did, it adds the inventions and new ideas which
the Greeks might be supposed to use if their art had been prolonged to our
own time. When the "Napoleon" was exhibited in New York, a monthly
magazine, whose art-criticisms were at that time contributed by a writer of
notorious incompetency, went so far as to call it "a work possessing scarcely
a single good quality;" and said farther that the French "made short work of
it when exhibited at their last Exposition." The fact is that, in the first place,
the French regarded it with great jealousy, because the first brilliant success
in applying the romantic stj'le of Delaroche to sculpture did not happen to
come from a French statuary; and that, in the second place, the government
of the day having chosen to make the figure a Bonapartist emblem, covering
its feet day by day with fresh violets and votive poems, the artists, all strong
L^::<:;,i r,i.n,-,,l'„:x
The Grandmother s Tales,
i66 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
anti-Bonapartists, were reluctant to swell the peans of a masterpiece which
recalled their political aversions, while it aroused their unwilling admiration.
Dupre and Vela are confessedly at the head of their art in their native country;
but other sculptors are joined in a friendly confederacy in the experiment of
pushing sculpture as far as it will go in the romantic and picturesque, or rather
pictorial, direction. They freely imitate sadn, silk, velvet, or frieze, with the
resources of their clever chisels. It is true the ancients, with as much sincerity,
represented in their marbles the limited variety of textures which their domestic
looms afforded. Vela's "Napoleon," because it had a blanket so perfecdy carved
as to deceive the eye, was derided by some sapient persons ; yet in a painting,
such as Delaroche's "Death of Elizabeth," the realisdc treatment of draperies
and cushions is not held to impair the grand dramatic and tragic impression.
Too many cridcs of sculpture are still in the same state of development that
Reynolds was when he declared that drapery in a historical painting should be
neither like silk or linen or woolen, but only "drapery," sublimated, or in a
state of generalization. This seems very ridiculous, as applied to paindng, but
it is still applied, without rebuke, to sculpture. Barzaghi's "Childish Vanity"
represents to perfection the rich folds of "gros-grain" silk. Let not this affect
our liking for the simple litde maiden, as she innocendy trails the grand train
across the floor.
The figure of "Steam," by Rosetd, needs no special description apart from
that of its pendant, "Electricity," already noticed in these pages. Both belong
to the modern romandc or "boudoir" school of sculpture, seeking to please by
prettiness and Ingenuity rather than by dignified and forcible imaginative
treatment.
A painting of a class to make the beholder stop and think, is "The
Casual Ward," by Fildes, engraved on pages 1 58 and 1 59. This picture, which
attracted a great deal of notice in the English department, was one of the
greatest and best exhibited. It is the work of a young artist, who achieved
great popular favor in 1869, and has steadily and worthily maintained his
position.
The figures in this picture are portraits of real people. They have nothing
in common except hunger, desdtution and rags, and are fair types of the classes
who drift into the Casual Wards of English cides night after night.
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The poor woman with a baby in her arms, and a ragged boy and poor
girl running at her side, is the wife of a laborer who is now undergoing three
weeks' imprisonment for assaulting her, while she is left penniless. Hating the
thought of separation from her children, the poor mother is on her way to the
country, where she has friends whom she expects to help her.
The old man with thin, worn features and a tall hat has been to London
to look after an erring son, who, from being vicious, has become criminal, and
the father has given the son every penny of the slender sum he brought with
him, and carries nothing but a heavy heart back to his native village.
The wretched lad crouched on the pavement has, literally, no history. He
never knew father or mother — at least his mother deserted him about the time
he could remember anything. He was bred in the gutter, and he lives in the
streets. There are thousands of such boys in London.
The two men who come next in rotation are vagabonds. One calls him-
self "an odd man on the look-out for a job;" the other avers that his health
does not allow him to work, and that he subsists mainly on what "ladies and
gendemen who are good to him" choose to give. The policeman could tell
you that this man is a well-known beggar, who must have been unusually
unsuccessful in his vocation to-day, or he would not condescend to the meagre
fare of the Casual Ward. Those folded arms, that shrinking mein, those legs
clinging together as if to strengthen each other's weakness, that face and chin
buried as they are in the shrugged shoulders, combine to form a tableau, the
artistic merit of which seldom fails to make the public pay tribute. Very
different is the "odd man," who assumes a sturdy rough-and-ready air, as if
anxious to undertake some heavy labor, but this is only another form of pre-
tence. He is always out of work, always professing a readiness to be employed,
and is one of the most noted shirkers in the labor-yard, where all these people
are called upon to perform a prescribed quantity of work before leaving in the
morning, in return for their shelter and food.
The central figure, middle-aged, with the Burgundy nose and damaged
presence, who rears himself against the wall and keeps his hands firmly in his
trousers pockets, with a half humorous air of philosophic resignation, is one
of those too-frequent wrecks from unrestrained indulgence in drink, of whom
every reader, we venture to assert, knows some living example. "What a
FINE ART.
169
fellow this must have Ijeen in his time!" How often must he have "seen the
gas put out!" And was he ever beloved of woman? Doubtless; but as
doubtless was that love as Dead Sea fruit — disappointment and ashes! Now
y. Gajnfiffs, S/r.
The Erring Wife.
comes the sad down-hill of his career. There is a rich huskiness in his voice,
and a twinkle in his bleary eyes, which speak forcibly of tap-room eloquence
and pot-house celebrity. Outcast as he is, this casual pauper is a keen politician
and will denounce the perfidy of ministers and proclaim the decadence of Eng
land to any one who will listen.
I70 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, 1 8 76.
The mechanic who nurses his sleepy child so tenderly — a child whose
comely features are full of girlish beauty — and the bowed and gaunt woman,
his wife, are looking out for work. He has been ill, and was never very
expert, so he found his place filled by one younger and more skilful than
himself on receiving his discharge from the hospital, and he is now plodding
his way to the neighborhood of a distant town, where, as he is told, such
services as he can render are in demand.
Of the two youths in the corner, one has been respectable, and the other
belongs to the same type as the crouching boy. Several additional years of
vagabondage have passed over the head of the other, however, and he is past
reclaiming. He is relating some thieving exploit to the youth by his side, who
is too much occupied in pitying himselt to heed his companion's stories. There
is a lurking grin on the face of the scamp in the Scotch cap which is very
characteristic ; while the aix of despairing woe with which the more gently
nurtured youth peers into vacancy makes one feel that he bitterly repents the
folly which has brought him to his present pass.
A little while back, and the Italian artists were zealous supporters of the
Church, pious defenders of the Pope's temporal power, and humble communi-
cants at the foot of the Roman altar. They lived and labored in the traditions
of Michael Angelo, and Raphael and Tintoretto, whose talents developed them-
selves in the adornment of sacred edifices. Even Canova, though partaking in
the classical, Davidian revival of the commencement of our century, made his
most patriotic "effect" in reclaiming, as "the patrimony of the Church," the
works of art confiscated by Napoleon ; after which he solemnly dedicated the
rest of his life to religion, repaired to his native town in the robes of a knight
of Christ, and had a most orthodox death and burial. In these latter times,
the ideal is changed. We hear nothing of the religion of contemporary Italian
artists. The bright spirits of the time have for watchword not the Pope's
political power, but the "unity of Italy." We hear of Vela as "a warm
patriot," and a fighting volunteer under Garibaldi. His favorite pupil, Bernas-
conti, shares his views. The ambition of a modern Italian artist is to create a
warm, human, sensuous art, to emulate the dazzling career of Fortuny; the
cold of the cloister has too lone influenced the career of genius in this old
stronghold of beauty. In adapting the resources of the chisel deliberately to
Roberto Bompiani, Pinx.
Foinpetian Boy Flute- Player,
172 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
what is called genre art, the Italians have begun a vast and peculiar experiment,
the most extended that has been made by an}^ nation of sculptors since the
antique. They sent to Philadelphia a world of figures representing the comedy
of life, its accidents, mishaps and fleeting graces. Many of the subjects seemed
fit only for the transitory sketches which an artist makes on his studio wall
with a morsel of coal. Most of them were etudes — artists' "bits," inspired by
a happy accident of light and shade, — the whimsical contrast of a splendid
remnant of old silk with a child's naked flesh (as in Barzaghi's figure on
page 145) — or a fleeting recollection of the carnival, as Borghi's sleepy, imper-
tinent girl in domino, resembling a guttered ball-candle surprised by the first
ray of sunrise. The very titles of their groups forsook the individuality of
former work. Just as water-color ardsts like Simonetti or Induno will entitle
their studies according to the artistic problem involved — such as "Effect of
Satin by Candle-light," or "The Ball-dress," so these sculptors, instead of heroic
or historic personalities, give us titles such as Pessina's "The Costume of Mary
Stuart," or Pandiani's "Capricciosa." And the topics selected are sketchy,
ephemeral, accidental — the flutter of a smile, the fall of a tear, the blowing of
a bubble, the undulation of a veil in the breeze. To expand the capacity of
their art in a different direcdon from that of the grand classical works of
Greece was an admirable and honorable notion ; it is just what the Greeks
themselves would have done if their civilization had continued without a break
to our own century; only, it is a pity that so much of the Italian skill took
the direction of over-ornament, and rococo and what is called in Rome (Irom
the French baroque^ "barocchismo."
But we check this querulous complaint in its incipiency on noticing an
example which shows all the flexible ingenuity of the modern school without
any of its triviality'. Magni's "Reading Girl," of which we present a steel
engraving, after being more talked of than any statue in the London Exhibition
of 1862, was represented, in a diminished repetition, at Philadelphia, where it
was designated as No. 253, and attracted the attention of the judicious in the
long axis-galler)' of the Art Annex. The "Leggitrice," or Reading Maid, has
divested herself for bed, let her hair pardy down, and prepared her slender
limbs for the couch ; but ere she seeks its protection, she must give a minute
to her favorite chapter. And then, of course, the minute becomes an hour, the
TietLo li-'J^. sc
THE REABIM& GIlRlL,
i mteTnational ExliiiitLorL 187 6
G-EBBIE &BAEiirE.
FINE ART. 173
bare foot orows stone on the chill stone floor, the volume is more than half
turned over, and the Leggitrice, iairly caught in the bibliophilist's trap — absorbed
like many an inordinate but less beautiful bookworm — forgets time, duty, cold,
hunger, and self in the absorption of the page. Prof. Magni has caught her
just as she has become petrified into a marble image ; she has not as yet lost
the sweet grace of life and the flexible charm of girlhood. There is something
captivatingly bold and original in the way her lithe figure is thrown sideways
on the worn rush chair, and her old robe made a readinsf-cushion as she rests
the volume upon it. Every observer has yielded to the simple spell of this
statue, and its repetitions or 7'epliche adorn several galleries; one of them is
in the Twelfth Saloon of the Brera Gallery in the sculptor's native city of
Milan ; another is at Padua, in the convent of San Antonio. Besides his
"Reading Girl," the artist was represented at Philadelphia by a life-size figure
of "Angelica," weeping a big marble tear as she clung to her rock, and a figure
of Mme. Ristori in the character of Mary Stuart. His "Socrates" and "David"
procured him additional fame, and duplicates of both of them have been recendy
purchased to adorn the new Hall of Congress of the Chilian Republic. His
"Reading Girl," "Socrates," "David," "Angelica," and "Ristori" were all at the
Paris Exhibition of 1867. While these pages have been in preparation, Pietro
Magni has ceased to live; he died on the 9th of January, 1877. We learn
from a correspondent in his own country (Miss Brewster, the admirable news-
teller — the "public letter-writer," in fact, for fair Italy at large, that "woman
nation" whose lovers in the West are laid under constant obligations for so
many skilfully-penned epistles) that his habits were peculiar, and somewhat
stained with a facile vice of genius, the love of wine. It is even said that he
rented a half-dozen obscure lodgings in Milan, where he was Professor, that he
might be conveniendy carried to bed from whatever haunt he lost conscious-
ness in. Wliatever his fraikies may have been. Prof. Magni had the essential,
incommunicable quality of genius; and we cannot but feel a measure of regret
that this humble tribute, which he migrht have liked as comino- from the to him
mysterious West, can never reach him.
A young sculptor of Magni's own city of Milan, Donate Barcaglia, sent to
the Exposition a number of groups most ambitiously conceived and executed —
works which trifled and toyed with the difficulties of the material as proudly as
C. Caiti^:i.<ne. Pinx.
A Call on
'.cle^ the Cardinal.
A Oil "I -' '■''"''■ "" Cardinal
176 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
any of the singular sculptures of the Neapolitan Church we have spoken of
It can hardly be denied, though, that Signor Barcaglia's groups trenched upon
the rococo, upon "barocchismo." One of them delineated a balcony overrun
with flowers, a soap-bubble, a pair of children, ribbons, laces — all in the size
of nature — quite a garden landscape with figures. Another, which though not
fulfillino- our notion of the most tasteful art-theme imaginable is of great tech-
nical interest, we have considered well worth representing, and exhibit its
likeness on page 161. It is entitled "Fleeting Time," and consists of two life-
size fio-ures in marble. The effect of the principal figure, with his enormous
hoverinp' wings beatine the air and castincr a sinister shadow on the other
personage, is of a kind seldom derived from the art of sculpture. The femi-
nine figure, that of a worldly-looking beauty "between two ages," hurried along
by the half-grotesque fluttering and prancing phantom she so terribly dreads, is
strikino- if not pleasant. She resists the influence of Time with an expression
in which her habitual pouting coquetry is mixed with a real terror. Executed
in oils as a picture, this subject would be a universally admired motif if wrought
by a competent hand. Executed in so many hundred-weight of solemn white
marble, it contradicts all our old ideas of the decorum of sculpture. It seems
like fan-painting petrified unkindly into stone. But the new school is deter-
mined to show that it can indicate all the effects of painting.
Italian painting, too slenderly represented at Fairmount Park, nevertheless
sent some distinguished contributions which defended its title to stand up on
even terms with the sculpture. The Chevalier Roberto Bompiani, who sent to
the "Exposition Universelle" of 1867 a fine picture of "Autumn," contributed
to the Centennial Anniversary a beautiful pair of painted panel-subjects, of
upright shape, which, though executed in oil, had almost the effect of bas-reliefs,
from their statuesque treatment and classic elegance. One, of which we give
an engraving on page 167, represented "The Anniversary;" the other (see
page 171), delineated a "Pompeiian Flute-Player." The spirit of ancient Italy
is revived in these solitary figures, somewhat in the style of Alma-Tadema's
mars'elous restorations of antique life. "The Anniversary" represents a lady
of rank decorating with flowers a terminal bust of her dead husband, the lost
head of the household. These memorial busts were set up by the Romans as
family galleries of ancestral painted portraits are arranged in more modern
fe
^
Q
<
Q
FINE ART.
177
Christopher Columbus Monument.
times. The excavations of Pompeii reveal the position and style of these
busts, usually crowning a term or square monolithic monument, and provided
178 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
at the shoulders with projections on which wreaths were hung. They were
common in all houses, and we know that in Rome, at least in the time of the
Antonines, the Senate took upon itself to decree what emperors should be
represented in statuary within the mansions of the citizens. The stately lady
in the picture, whose time for wearing mourning weeds must have long since
passed, but whose memory recurs on the solemn day of her bereavement to
the impulse of affection she felt as a bride, is a person of obvious rank, fit to
grace the noblest atriums ot Rome. The subject of the other composition is
less aristocratic; the "Flute-Player" steps with bare feet, a poor hired slave,
over the mosaic pavement he is hardly deemed worthy to press. Behind him
we see a table, copied from a beautiful one unearthed in Pompeii, which has
served for a model to more than one artist. The instruments on which he is
about to play are the double clarionet, called tibics gemincB. One of these tibice
was to be seen at the Exposition, in the Castellani collection. The two tubes
were blown separately; the tube held in the right hand, and blown with the
right side of the mouth, produced the three high notes, and was called tibia
dextra; the tibia sinistra produced the four lower notes, and was played with
the other corner of the mouth. This art of sending the breath alternately
through two pipes is not yet entirely lost, for the peasants in certain parts of
Russia still employ, to console their solitude among the vast flocks of the
steppes, double shepherds' tibice, called in their language "dutka." Our flute-
player, crowned with festal wreaths, advances to contribute his share of enter-
tainment to some orreat feast, of which the scattered flowers, and the elerant
wine-vase, yet litter the table ; the classic assemblage of music, wine and gar-
lands makes us think of Petronius's description of a Roman feast, or of Plato's
more exquisite drama of a Greek one, in the ".Symposium."
Classic Rome — the Rome whose monuments are eternal, and whose modern
beauties seem but like decorations hung upon the enduring pyramids — is seen
in the picture by Chevalier Francois Antoine Bossuet, represented in our cut
on page 125. The flute-player in the last-named picture must have often passed
that Mausoleum of Adrianus and that /Elian bridge — works of the time of
Hadrian, yet solid still for our own use if we choose. But the centre of the
picture is occupied by a modern structure, the proudest effort of the renais-
sance— St. Peter's. And between the sacred dome and the drum-shaped tomb
FINE ART.
179
is seen the square, many-windowed, factory-like Vatican, wliere the aged and
sickly Pope counts the days of his voluntary imprisonment. No view in the
world is so suggestive, so thought-compelling, as this. M. Bossuet, who takes
us in this picture to the banks of the Tiber and the shores of the past, is an
aged painter, born at Ypres in 1800, but residing at Brussels. He sent to
Philadelphia, besides a Spanish scene, a view of Grenada. The Pennsylvania
Leon Camorre, Phix.
Cassandra.
From a drenvin^- by the iirCist.
Academy has long possessed one of his beautiful landscapes, and enrolled him
among its honorary members — a distinction which he mentions in the catalogues,
just after his installation as Chevalier of the order of Isabella the Catholic
of Spain.
But old as is the Tiber, the Nile seems older. By a Paris landscapist,
N. Berchere, we have a view of the Nile in the time of its inundation — an
original and striking picture, of which we present a fine engraving on page
151. The Father of Rivers, which we are accustomed to think of as peaceful,
sad and somnolent — tedious with the weight of its immemorial history and
i8o THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
date — is here represented stretching almost to the horizon, and lashed to tur-
bulence by one of those fierce, rainless storms which are called "gales" on the
water, "simoons" on the desert. The light fiery cloudlets in the sky are torn to
fibres in the tremendous blast. In the foreground two boats have become
entangled, and their broad lateen sails are tearing each other to pieces. This
novel storm effect, with its element of tremendous heat added, gives one of the
most startling conceptions of Nile travel ever suggested by art.
Frederick Goodall's "Cairo Fruit Girl" (pages 146-7) and Charles Lan-
delle's "Fellah Woman" (page 163) are suitable figures with which to people
our reveries of modern Egypt. They show the characteristic ways of telling
travelers' tales indulged in by the English and French artist respectively. The
Englishman gives us a commonplace, broad-cheeked woman of the people,
tattooed on the forehead, bearing a basket of bananas and lemons through the
street (we fancy her crying her wares in a voice as astringent as the first and
as acid as the second), and smoking a commonplace cigarette. Behind her are
clustering stalks of maize. She is vulgar, not uncomely, and represented with
uncompromising truth. Monsieur Landelle (one of the most popular portraitists
and religious painters of Paris) must give a more poetic turn to his Egyptian
goddess. In her sphinx-like cap, turning her face full-front upon you, she
penetrates you with a glance from her long eyes bordered with kohl — a glance
sad, hazy, mysterious, and suggestive of innumerable generations of servitude
or unalleviated toil. She leans her hand, whose wrist is loaded with heavy,
tasteless jewels like fetters, upon the enormous water-vase, whose like she and
her countrywomen have carried to the Nile from a period long anterior to the
selling of Joseph into Egypt. Mr. Goodall's Egyptian woman is advancing;
M. Landelle's, even like the Egypt of our dreams, is motionless. Which is the
truer? or are they both different aspects of a truth?
The lovely park-scenery and succulent turf of Old England is represented
in the picture of "Haddon Hall: the Warrant," of which we gave an engraving
on page 98. By the same painter, Giuseppe Castiglione, a Neapolitan residing
in Paris and exhibiting at Philadelphia among the French artists, is our selected
picture of "A Call on our Uncle, the Cardinal," engraved on pages 174-5. Now,
the character of garden-landscape is totally different in the two countries of
England and Italy. The Italian trees are harsh, dry and severe-looking; they
^
[=!
H
i=j
I
FINE ART. i8i
tend to compact, monumental, almost architectural forms; covered with dust, or,
after a rain, reflecting the deepest of skies from each leaf suddenly turned into
a mirror, they are massed in strange grays and blues against the heavens. The
ilexes, olives, stone-pines, and cypresses seem like sculptural shapes, carved in
solid clumps, and with the accustomed green of northern vegetation modified
into shadowy browns and grays. "Turt," as understood in England, cannot be
obtained in the South ; the grass is irregular, thin and parched, except for a
short season in the spring, or for the few hours following a storm. A nation
of artists has known how to harmonize this "monumental" kind of vegetation
with appropriate effects of architecture, and accordingly the "Italian landscape-
garden," with its imposing flights of very broad low steps, its balustrades, its
alleys, statues, and vistas, has been created among the stately villas of Rome,
and sometimes imitated in the North. But a Southerner suddenly transported,
on a bright day, into an English park, is simply blinded and overcome. "The
effect," says Taine of Kew Gardens, "is too strong; in the sun, it is over-
powering; the incomparable verdure then assumes tones so rich and intense
that they cannot be transferred to canvas." M. Castiglione has proved himself
capable of appreciating both types of park-scenery. His " Hacldon Hall" is a
rich tapestry of varied greens, almost covering the space of the canvas, and
developing a sunny gradation of tones in an infinity of leaf-torms. The present
composition is a blue sky, dentellated with the noble but sparse forms of the
stone-pine and cypress, which escape from behind the urns and balustrades of
an elevated terrace. The grass is a straggling intruder among the pebbles of
an ill-kept gravel-walk ; and the view is not over a turty glade, but over a
gleaming city, like Rome seen from the Pincian. Into this mosaic of lustrous
and formal shapes, come the figures which M. Castiglione knows so well how
to distribute: at the right, the Cardinal in his scarlet hat, attended by a monk
and an aged nobleman ; at the left, his attendant Suisse, halberd in hand and
salade on head ; and in the middle, ascending the terrace-steps, a bevy of youth
and beauty, gay mundane youths and maidens in the gallant costumes of the
epoch of Louis XIII.
Another landscape-gardening effect is sought by Achille Formis, of Milan,
whose picture of "The Park," hung in the Exhibition near to Fontana's striking
scene from "Robert le Diable," we engrave on page 133. In the original, the
/■
i84 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
gleam of positive sunshine, glancing on the stone-work and on the forms of
the dogs and human beings, was singularly successful. The composition is
marked off into strata by a horizontal line of balustrades, above which are
bunched together the thick bundles of perpendicular tree-stems, while beneath
are parties of ladies in modern Worth dresses, meeting and introducing each
other. The Cavaliere Formis is a member of the Art Academies of Milan and
Naples, received a prize at the late World's Fair in Santiago de Chili, and
exhibited at Philadelphia, besides the present picture, a striking scene on the
banks of Lake Como, entitled "The Alpine Tourists."
These qualities of pure translation — the conveying of positive sunshine and
air, the exact relief and "value" of foliage against the sky, or, in figure-painting,
the truest representation of flesh in light and shadow, are characteristic of the
Continental schools of painting. The aim of the intellectual, English school, on
the contrary, is rather interpretation; the giving of a meaning to nature, ser-
mons to stones, its subtle poetry to the ocean or the forest, and, in human
beings, the look of the soul rather than the look of the body. To paint natural
objects just as nature's chemistiy makes them, and just as nature's air and light
color and relieve them, is the grammar of art. The best of the old masters
sought principally for this ; only, as they were invariably great poets, the
romance of their souls tinged the work and made their pictures imaginative.
To represent nature candidly as it is, is the only safe way; to paint it as you
fancy it might be, if it were sentient enough to attitudinize lor the grand poem
you think you have in your head, is the tempting way and the perilous way.
We have no space here to go into this, but would simply point out that a
practised critic can always find a strained falsetto effect about a picture which
the artist paints to make you perceive, not the scene he beholds, but his
thoughts in beholding it. Even the "Mountain Gloom," a large water-color by
A. P. Newton (pages 138-9), though a patient, pains-taking and impressive
picture, is perhaps gently tinged with a literary kind of sentimentalism. The
incident of the shepherd's dog, watching the carcass of the lost sheep against
the arrival of the birds of prey, is thoroughly Wordsworthian. The title,
"Mountain Gloom," is unfortunate, as it simply advertises the painter's obses-
sion by a famous chapter of Raskin's ; and the whole composition is an
illustration in colors of these delicate phrases of that author, which best
FINE ART.
185
describe it: "The
summits of the
rocky moun-
tains," says Mr.
Ruskin, "are gath-
ered into solemn
crowns and cir-
clets, all flushed
in that strange,
faint silence of
possession by
the sunshine
which has in it
so deep a mel
ancholy; full of
power, yet as
frail as shadows;
lifeless, like the
walls of a sep-
ulchre, yet beau-
tiful in tender
fall of crimson
folds, like the
veil of some sea-
spirit that lives
and dies as the
foam flashes ; fix-
ed on a perpet-
ual throne, stern
against all
strength, lifted
F. Darzagki Sf.
The First Friend.
above all sorrow,
and yet effaced
and melted ut-
terly into the air
by that last sun-
beam that has
crossed to them
from between
the two orolden
clouds."
Another speci-
men of the cele-
brated English
water-color
school, of whose
products we
never have the
chance to see as
many as we
should like, —
there having
been (for in-
stance) but fifty-
four of them at
the Centennial,
— is "The Bea-
con," by J. Absa-
lon, a London
painter of some
eminence, though
no representa-
tive of the modern "thoughtful" creed. He simply gives us (page 187) a Scotch
or Cornish girl, the fisher's bride, who holds a flaring torch to guide to shore
her husband's fishing-smack. She is not so elegant a figure as "Litde Em'ly,"
i86 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
watching with the light for her uncle Peggotty ; but she is gentle, sincere and
good ; and the forg^etfulness that makes her stand on the rouoh rock in the
salt wind is an earnest of that form of human love which in its unselfishness
is most like the Divine.
The charming oil-painting entitled "Mistress Dorothy" was engraved and
published by us on page 68 of this work. In the merited fulness with which
we desire to treat the products of the British school of artists, we add (pages
182-3) a large copy of "Only a Rabbit," by the same artist, Mr. George A.
Storey, of London. The scene carries us back to the good old days of sport
in the English greenwood, when every grange kept its pack of beagles, and
when Cowper and Burns had not yet raised the voice of sympathy for animals
shot at. Before the uprising of our modern humanitarian sentiment, all hearts
beat in unison with the excitement of the dogs and hunters.
" What sweeter music would ye hear
Than hounds and beagles crying?
The startled hare runs mad with fear,
Upon her speed relying."
Onl\- a Rabbit, and a single specimen at that, has been the reward of the
squire on this luckless day. His wife pleasantly twits him with his want of
skill, holding the flaccid game-bag in her hand, and pointing to the solitary
evidence of his prowess. An intelligent dog looks upon the meagre booty
with obvious shame and disgust. The easy squire, who is getting too stout to
follow his pack through the bracken, drowns his discomfiture in fast-following
glasses of ale, which the neat serving-maid replenishes from her flagon. Out
of the unlucky hunter's failure, Mr. Storey contrives an artist's success. His
picture is well diversified, in a quiet key appropriate to the humbleness of the
incident, and his personages are distributed with skill. Each figure assists in
telling the tale, and the composition is dated, as it were, by the assemblage of
antique costumes and architecture, all homely and countrified, and all appro-
priate to the epoch when Milton was reviving English pastoral.
This anecdotic faculty — the skill with which an incident is told — is the grand
characteristic of the British school, and is a legacy from the genius of Hogarth.
Two or three more pictures contributed to the British section we will notice as
instances of this narrative power, hx means of which art with our cousins per-
y. Ab!OLon. Pi
The Beacon.
i88 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
forms many of the functions of literature. Other schools, we may hint, rather
understand art as existing through purely plastic qualities. Before an English
picture we wonder what the personages have been doing, or what they are
going to do. Before an Italian picture — the saints of Raphael or the goddesses
and allegories of the Venetians — we wonder what they are, and are lost in the
purely artistic contempladon of their form, their essence, and their grace. Mr.
Calderon, an artist in high repute in London, contributed "After the Battle," a
touching picture, illustrating fully what we have said of the literary character
of Enoflish art. We have inserted a steel eng^ravinof of this work. The sen-
sation in examining it is the same as that of reading the chapter of "Esmond,"
where the young orphan is found in the deserted house by Dick Steele and his
fellow-soldiers. We see in Mr. Calderon's picture a French farm-house, of
which one side has been blasted out, entered by a merry gang of English
soldiers during the war of the Vendee. Their red coats make spots of color
against the plastered wall. On an overturned cradle sits a little French child
of six years, solitary guardian of the devastated home. The soldiers, exam-
ining and prowling here and there, have stumbled on this incident of war —
the cradle upset, the undressed child with one wooden shoe, the trimmed and
useless lamp upon the dresser, the key hanging on the nail, ready for the door
that has been blown to atoms. A pretty drummer-boy, like Hogarth's young
drummer in "The March to Finchley," leans over, face to face with the little
unfortunate, and would ask a question but that their languages are different.
The painter, in his search for an anecdote in which art could perfectly take the
place of literary narrative, has actually found a scene where the persons are
ol necessity dumb! As the French infant is scared and silent, and the English
intruders are evidently not the kind to know a word of the language, the nar-
rative is really as eloquent on canvas as it could have been in reality. English
tableau-drama can no further go! Art no longer feels its lack of uttered
speech! The painted novel is perfect, not even a word being lost!
This tendency to take the place of narrated anecdote by means of art is
also characteristic of Mr. Alexander Johnston's "Covenanter's Marriage," of
which we have presented to our readers a careful engraving on steel. It is
like an act in a drama. The scenery is painted with the rocky fastnesses of
Scotland, in whose most secret recesses the persecuted Campbellites solemnized
<
FINE ART.
the union of two of their sect. King Charles's cavaher troops are on the alert,
ready to prevent the illegal and hated ceremony. Already, on a distant moun-
tain path, we see them, their horses spurred and royal standard waving, while
the band of faithful Calvinists go calmly on with the rite, in the form which
their conscience approves. Their sentinel, posted on a horse among the group,
perceives the peril, warned by a breathless lad beside the pine-tree, who waves
a signal of danger ; but, with characteristic and heroic courage, he raises his
hand to prevent the boy from shouting, determined that the sacramental rite
shall be consummated before the group seeks its safety in retreat. In addition
to this swift, running, tumultuous action of his picture, making it a rival of
some chapter of Sir Walter Scott at his liveliest, Mr. Johnston has patriotically
included a set of Scottish types of unimpeachable naturalness, from the shep-
herd in his plaid who holds the register, to the Scotch hound crouched in the
foreground, and from the thorny thistle at the left to the buxom bride and
bridemaidens, worthy to be sung by Burns and Allan Ramsay.
Nor is the anecdotic quality one would signalize in British art lacking in
Mr. E. M. Ward's picture, a picture which may justly be called famous, and
which merits the excellent steel-plate we publish — the painting of "Chester-
field's Ante-room." Here we have the "anecdote" carried to its utmost limit in
the art of painting, so that every figure has the epigrammatic point of a good
atter-dinner story, and seems more like a piquant paragraph than a sketch in
color and light and shade. The yawners and gapers, the poor and swaggering
captain who lifts his eyeglass to the pretty girl to prove that though his purse
Is lean and preferment would be welcome, he has not forgotten the points of
a fine woman — the young lady herself in powder and patches, who totters on
her high heels, attended by two servants, a negro and a beau, and who laughs
with delighted curiosity at that rare animal, Dr. Johnson the lexicographer — the
glimpse of Chesterfield himself smiling upon a departing client, and the more
ferocious figure of Johnson — all are touched with the vivacity, the neatness, of
a finished story-teller. It is a letter of Horace Walpole's in paint. The person
in the doorway having the interview with Chesterfield is Colley Cibber. "A
sudden disgust was taken by Johnson," says Boswell, "upon occasion of his
having been one day kept long in waiting in his lordship's ante-chamber, for
which the reason assigned was that he had company with him, and at last, when
192 ' THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIB ITION, 1876.
the door opened, out walked Colley Cibber." If there is a misconception in
the picture, it is in representing Johnson as somewhat too old. "Seven years,
my lord, have now passed," he says in his famous letter of 1755, "since I
waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door." Seven years
previous to 1755 would take us back to the year 1748, when Dr. Johnson was
thirty-nine years of age ; and the painting represents a man in his forties rather
than a man in his thirties. The quarrel between the author and the lord was
the sign of a grand revolt; it announced the close of the era of feudalism in
letters. Before that angry protest, an author was a pensioner, who hastened
to put himself with each new work, under the patronage of some eminent
person, who reaped a good half of the glory by advertising the production in
his circle ot acquaintance, and procuring publicity for the cleverness he pro-
tected. Johnson, by a sturdy blow, showed that one author meant to be
independent, and could be. "Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had
a patron before," he said. "He is the proudest man existing," said Johnson
of Chesterfield, in high glee at the honor of coping with a rival po\ver of such
magnitude. "I think by your own account you are the prouder man of the
two," said a listener. Dr. Adams.
We cannot more fiiirly illustrate this predominance oi the literary faculty
in English artists, than by taking up a good French picture, of a sort which
likewise seems at first sight to be mere anecdotic painting. Let us examine
"King Morvan" (pages 190-1), by Evariste -Vital Luminais, a painter born at
Nantes. Here are Morvan, a chief of the Bretons in the ninth century, his
wife, and the priest Witeher. The hol\' man appeared at the rude court in
Brittany as an envoy of Louis the Debonnaire, son of Charlemagne ; Morvan,
who owes suzerainty to Louis, has long neglected the payment of tribute ; the
priest has come to persuade him to his duty. As the holy man delivers his
tedious sermon, the young wife of Morvan emerges from their nuptial apart-
ment, takes possession of the chief, sits upon his knee, fondles his hand, and
persuades him to refuse the contribution. The story is toM with marvelous
power, especially in insisting on the pertinacity, the clinging, lingering persua-
siveness, of the woman. The ambassador may be prolix, but there is a prolixit\'
of affection which always contrives to sit out the most patient pleader whose
motive is less deep than that of love. Now this anecdote-painting, though not
FINE ART. 193
neglected by the French artist, is soon felt to be but a subordinate invention.
What is really in his eye is the plastic impression, the grouping of the supple
woman and rigid king, like the bow and the cord, and the monumental support
which the figure of Witeher lends to the composition ; the costumes are well
studied, and they assist the story, but they are seen to be used as artistic deco-
rations ; not a single artistic motif is neglected which the subject affords, from
the ecclesiastical embroidery on the priestly garments to the savage buckskin
suit of the primitive king, sitting so sturdy and sullen upon his wolf-skin. The
three figures are interwoven into a group that has the sdllness and calculated
grace of sculpture. As for the topic of the picture, it amounts at most to a
"situation" — a contrast of motives and dispositions; it is hardly a "narrative,"
a sequence of events. A true artist has three chief concerns, the coloring of
his picture, the lighting of his picture, and its plastic difficulties or difficulties
of drawing. A literary man astray in the craft of art thinks first of his nar- ■
rative. If his expressions are telling and his incident lively and readable, he
believes he has made a good picture — and the world, little occupied with such
distinctions, is easily induced to think so too.
We have delayed thus far to describe the work of a pupil of the last-
mentioned painter — Miss Emily Sartain — because we wished to give this modest
but promising young artist some of the reflected credit proceeding from the
glory of her instructor. Luminals. Miss Sartain is easily at the head of the
lady engravers on steel in this country, her portraits inserted in many important
works bearing testimony to the exactitude with which she catches a likeness,
and the artistic way in which she handles the problems of texture and chia-
roscuro. It is widiin a very few years that this accomplished young lady has
ventured upon the difficulties of oil-painting, and the number of works by which
the public can judge her in her new walk is limited. After many months of
hard practice under the admirable tuition of M. Luminals, she has produced the
picture entitled "The Reproof" which certainly does credit to her abilities, and
has few or no marks of what is called the "prentice hand." The costumes are
of the time of Henry VIII: a young girl, who gives an indefinable impression
of having a will of her own beneath the temporary humility of her downcast
eyes and bowing posture, is listening to the strictures of a stately lady, who
seems to be the "maiden aunt" of the period. Some suitor, who has perhaps
o. //. s. .■a-:-''"'. Pi'ix
Siind, li
•■'"g.
196 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
conferred the fine jewels she wears upon her neck, has captivated the heart of
the maiden, but does not meet the views of her chaperone. It may result in
a restoration of the necklace, with the feuds, separation, and heart-burnings of
two noble families, or it may lead to an elopement — who shall say? Miss
Sartain has sketched the hesitancy, the doubt, of a situation still in abeyance ;
further than that it is not the province of art to go.
A "situation" — the sudden flash of artistic vision illuminating a scene, as
if the lightning were quickly to blaze upon some telling tableau of history, of
poetry, or of modern manners — that is the Continental conception of pictorial
art, in opposition to the English, which is apt to look before and after. This
is the case even with such a painting as Pierre-Charles Comte's "The King's
(Louis XI) Entertainment" (pages 118-19). Although the scene is a passage
of history — quite as much as the "Chesterfield's Ante-room" — yet the pre-occu-
pation of the distinguished painter has especially been to build up his compo-
sition with art and grace, to color it well, to please the eye with the skillful
arrangement of forms, and to cast over the whole group an agreeable unity
of light and shade. Still, we do not deny that die painter in this case trenches
somewhat on the ground of the anecdote-painters, that he occupies himself
with witty contrasts and effective bits of character, somewhat in the manner of
Hogarth. The most exacting advocate of "art for art's sake" cannot fairly
object to this, if the great qualities of plastik, as the Germans call it, are not
allowed to suffer, and are kept paramount. M. Comte e.xhibited this picture in
the Paris Salon of 1869, attributing his anecdote to the poet Mellin de Saint-
Gelais, the friend of Ronsard. Whether authentic or not, the incident is very
droll. The sick king, whose soul was between the hands of his barber-surgeon
and his priests — the former of whom stands at the bed-head, while a pair of
the latter are praying at the fireside — has admitted a pair of roving bohemians,
who entertain him with their dancing pigs. A pair of the absurd animals are
smirking and bowing to each other, one with knighdy sword, the other with
the high coif of a court lady. The vagrant's wife is preparing three more of the
trained animals to take part in the exhibition, while Tristan the Hermit and
his men-at-arms surround her with openly-smiling faces. The sour-visaged king,
in bed, lets his lean countenance smile, at least on one side of the face ; the
barber-surgeon smiles too, but in mere courtly complaisance, secretly deeming
e
^
^
198 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
the cure by laughter an infringement of his rights as physician. The best of
the jol>:e is the expression of the two monks, who cast sheep's eyes of intense
appreciation at the learned pigs, while muttering their paternosters for dear
life. The picture glows from margin to margin with the keenest life and humor,
and is altogether worthy of the artist, whose repute in treating the episodes
of history is very high.
The French motto of "art for art's sake" has led the French artists into
frequent study of the nude — not so much from any unworthy sentiment, we
fancy, as for the sake of passing off what is really a phase of preparatory,
academic study, by the introduction of some decorative accessions, as a finished
work of art, and so getting a litde money to replenish the ever-lean artistic
purse. The principal studies from the undraped figure in the French depart-
ment (which scandalized the public, we believe, rather more than the undraped
statues in Italy's exhibit) were Chartrin's "Angelica," Faivre-Duffer's "Venus,"
Cetner's "Salammbo," Garnier's "Bather," Perrault's "Bather," Tortez's "Echo,"
and Camorre's "Cassandra." Not to neglect entirely a characteristic feature of
the French contribution, w^e select a subject purified b}^ history and poetry,
Camorre's "Cassandra" (page 179). In ^schylus' "Agamemnon" we have a
moving and gloomy picture of the last hours of Cassandra — her return with
Agamemnon after the Trojan war to his unfriendly palace at Mycaene — her
oracular prophecies to him, which Apollo will not suffer to be believed, of
treachery and death within his home — and then the murderous deed of Clytem-
nestra, involving Cassandra's own death with the assassination of the King of
Men. It is one of the gloomiest pages of Hellenic fable, involving the subse-
quent revenge and madness of Orestes, the Greek Hamlet. M. Camorre's
noble, all-womanly figure was a strangely impressive one ; the prophetess, whose
youth had been made wretched by the love of Apollo — for the gods' costliest
gift is their love — lies at the foot of the smoking tripod of sacrifice, her fate
having been to see all the woe of the world in vision before it happened, and
to be laughed at for her discernment. Our sketch has the interest of being an
artistic autograph — the painter's first thought for his picture, copied by a
mechanical process in exact facsimile.
We have already illustrated (page 145) the amusing figure of "Vanity" by
Francesco Barzaghi, of Milan, and given a steel-plate of his "Finding of Moses."
FINE ART.
199
Signor Tratnltetta, Sc.
The Birds Kest.
On page 185 we show a third work by the same artist. "The First Friend"
represents a litde night-gowned girl, fatigued after a day's romp which has
tumbled her curls all into her eyes, shaking hands for "good-night" with a
200 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIB ITION, 1876.
fringy-pawed dog which is carried in her arms, and for whose living comrade-
ship she has contemptuously thrown her doll to the floor. We are reminded
of the pretty scene in "Les Miserables," where the inn-keeper's daughter of
Montfermeil, Eponine, plays with her cat: "Do you see, sister, this doll is
funnier than the real one. She moves about, and cries, and feels warm. Come,
sister, let us play with her. She will be my little girl, and I will be a lady,
and I will come to pay you a visit, and little by little you will notice her mous-
taches, and that will surprise you, and then you will notice her ears, and then
you will notice her tail, and that will surprise you. And you will say. Good
heavens ! And I will say. Yes, madam, it is a little girl of mine ; little girls
are made so this season." Victor Hugo, reporting this conversation, says that
the erace of childhood, like the brilliancy of butterflies' wing-s, vanishes when
you try to hold it; but our sculptor, at least, seems to have succeeded in
catching this infantile grace just before its vanishing.
Childish again in its ndivclc, but of more masculine sentiment, is the bronze
figure of a young "Shinty Player," from Chili, which many visitors to the
E.xposition must have admired in the western end of the Main Building. It
is truly gratifying to find the arts so advanced in the wealthy republic of the
South as this excellent statue indicates. The form is capitally poised, the coltish
look of a boy's unshaped joints and tendons is given without mincing the
matter, and the type is full of interest. The young half-breed, engaged in a
native game which might be described as "Polo without the horsemanship," lifts
his curved stick over his head with a gesture full of energy and decision, pre-
paring to strike the ball at his foot ; another ball is held provisionally in the
left hand. His stiff Indian hair is confined with a fillet, and he wears the short
drawers of the Tropics. Our engraving on page 128 presents the best view
of the statue — the leaning line which passes through the raised arm to the
advanced leg, and connects with both of these members the torso so finely
thrown back, appearing in the cut to great advantage, and marking a pose
which all artists must admire.
Likewise in bronze is the figure of "The Erring Wife," by Jules Cambos,
a French sculptor born in the town of Castres, and now practising at Paris,
after an assiduous study of his art under the leadership of Jouffroy. The
present model was first exposed at the Salon of 1869, in the material of
FINE ART. 201
marble. It has since been cast in bronze, and, like nearly all the French sculp-
ture exhibited in Philadelphia, was sent to us in the latter less fragile material.
Near by, in the Art Annex, stood the same artist's "Cigale" (or grasshopper —
from La Fontaine's fables — the improvident minstrel, who "having sung all,
summer, may go and dance all winter"). M. Cambos is also known for a
statue of Eve, exhibited at Paris in 1872, and a "Young Gaul," executed in
1868. He has received repeated medals. The statue we represent on page
169 shows a woman tighdy swathed in drapery of a complicated and original
cast, who has thrown herself on the ground in an agony of terror, and raised
her bound arms before her face, as a shelter from the terrible Jewish form of
execution. The fact that she has rushed up to the immediate presence of the
Saviour is skilfully indicated by her kneeling just upon the celebrated words,
written in the dust a moment since, and here given in French: "One celui
parmi vous qui se trouve sans peche jette la premiere pierre." We should
remember, in regarding this statue, that it is an historical, not a symbolical
figure. This immortal culprit, to whom we owe one of the tenderest sayings
of Jesus, and whose moment of humiliation before the Jerusalem rabble creates
for us the most merciful edict of the Christian law, really existed. She was
an historic character, though the splendor of the moral illustruted so absorbs
the mere actual incident, that she is probably classed by many careless thinkers
among the shadowy imaginations of Divine Parable ; but the Teacher needed
not to invent a parabolic story for every axiom ; he could evoke the axiom,
with the most burning impressiveness, out of the actual history ot each long
warm Syrian day.
We should like to pen some observations illustrating the preparation of
bronze statues, of which we have just described two. For the history of bronze-
casting we might go back to Pliny the Naturalist, who gives the pre-eminence
to this kind of sculpture, though antiquity has not left us nearly so many
specimens in bronze as in marble. Not to stray into this impertinent kind of
antiquarianism, we may say that modern artistic bronze-founding has been most
successfully practised at Paris, at Munich, and at Florence. In America, also,
by the importation of skilled artisans, the industry has prospered to admiration,
and faultless bronzes have been cast at Philadelphia by Robert Wood, as well
as at Chicopee in Massachusetts. A fair specimen of Paris bronze was the
Th\
of Cleopatra.
204 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
last-mentioned statue, "The Erring Wife." It illustrated the French theory of
leaving- the sculptor's touch upon the clay, so far as possible, in all its natural
spirit and roughness, avoiding in great measure the evidence of the chaser's
tool, the "rififler." The great foundry of Munich is very celebrated, an example
of its work being the Probasco fountain at Cincinnati. It is objected to its
method by French bronze-founders that it casts large statues in separate squarish
blocks, which though united by invisible seams, may afterwards change color
unevenly, so as to deface the monument with an arbitrary square patchwork.
Perhaps the best bronze-establishment in Europe was that of Papi in Florence,
lately closed by the Government. Its casting of Michael Angelo's "David," in
the size of the original, was a celebrated achievement. Barbedienne is at the
head of bronze manufacture in Paris, but his experts look up with envy to the
flawless mouldinor and tasteful finish of the Florence bronze statuarv. Great
attention was attracted at our Exposition to the Russian bronzes, cast by Chopin,
of St. Petersburg, from the inimitable equestrian statuettes of Lanceret.
A good German bronze is "The Dying Lioness" by Wolff, a Berlin artist,
a group which, from the time of the Exhibition and since, adorns the grounds
of Fairmount Park, near Memorial Hall. The figures are at least as large as
life, and include a lioness, whose shoulder has been pierced by the poisoned
arrow of the Kabyle hunter, a male lion, and two cubs. There is something
fine in the true family sentiment of this wilderness group, where the litde ones
pathetically feel at the stiffening body that will shelter and nourish them no
more, while the desert lord lifts himself in towering but unavailing rage, and
menaces the hunters with the thunder of his roar. The copper-plate which
illustrates this piece of sculpture we are glad to be able to declare one of the
most artistic plates contained in our work. It is by an American etcher and
painter, Mr. Peter Moran, brother of a whole group of artistic celebrities, and
himself an animal-painter of distinguished skill, as may be judged from his
picture seen on page 9, for the engraving of which, however, we had not the
advantayfe of his cunnino- burin.
Another permanent decoration of Fairmount Park is the monument to
Columbus, to celebrate the installation of which we have prepared the large
engraving on page 177. The history of this memorial is closely intertissued
(to use Shakespeare's word) with that of the Exposition. During the year
FINE ART.
205
before the Centennial Anniversary a movement was set on foot among the
Italian residents of the city of Philadelphia for the raising of a fine monument
to the Discoverer of America, in the Centennial year, near the commemorative
Exhibition ; the society found themselves able to collect funds with aoreeable
2o6 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
rapidity, and soon an order was sent to Italy for the execution of the first statue
of the deathless Genoese navigator ever set up by private subscription in any
one of the United States of America. In January, 1876, Mr. Viti, the Italian
consul in Philadelphia, who had charge of the enterprise, received photographs
of the model, and before the end of the Exposition the whole monument,
including the elaborate pedestal, was in place. It now graces the embowered
grounds of Fairmount Park, near the site of the International Fair, to which
Italy, in an especial degree, contributed the impression and stamp of artistic
distinction. It is very lofty. The statue on the summit is colossal, and of the
fairest white marble. Columbus is shown in his attributes as discoverer, eeopfra-
pher and navigator. He stands resting his hand upon a terrestrial globe, among-
whose Continental divisions his fingers have settled upon the part representing
America. At his feet is an anchor, signifying that it was through navigation
his invaluable boon was conferred upon mankind. His name, "Christopher
Columbus," is carved in larofe letters on the socle beneath his figure. On the
pedestal below is seen a bas-relief, representing Columbus leaving the Pinta in
a boat to plant upon the beach the Castilian flag. During the latter part of
the Fair's duration this marble Colossus looked calmly out upon the grounds
peopled with a world's hurrying multitudes. If anything could lend life and
intelligence to the stone eyes of a portrait, it would be the fact of Columbus,
standing on the soil of that continent which he gave to Europe as a wilderness
peopled with barbarians, at length throwing his shadow upon our mighty city,
where Europe's arts and nations were met in homage to our national existence.
We have been somewhat neglectful of the prosperous Austrian school of
painting, since giving a cut of that great masterpiece, the "Catherine Cornaro,"
by Makart, who must be considered an Austrian painter since he has accepted
a professorship in the Vienna Academy. Makart and Feuerbach, both offshoots
of the Munich school, are prominent instructors in the Austrian capital, and
have greatly changed \''ienna art for the better. Since the days when Petten-
kofifer and the other old academic spirits were the leading influences, a more
intelligent and broad manner has been developed, to the obliteration of former
national distinctions, and the assimilation of Austrian art with the intelligent art
of the rest of Europe. In fact, the recent tendency is towards the identifica-
tion of great art principles across the continent, and what we may call a
FINE ART.
207
diffusion of the litrht of French intellio-ence throughout the academies. In
Munich, the great contemporary master, Piloty, is a pupil and imitator of the
French Delaroche ; and Munich is supplying schoolmasters to the rest of
Teutonic Europe. The Belgian painters have long been completely French in
feeling. The ancient
landmarks are rapid-
ly dissolving, the old
hard German man-
ner, the Diisseldorf
manner as it is called
in America, being out
of favor even in its
former strongholds.
Austria made a very
creditable display at
Philadelphia of about
one hundred and
twenty oil paintings,
almost all from the
city of Vienna; about
thirty water- colors ;
and some fine etch-
ings by Unger —
while, again, the sen-
tinel bronze groups
in front of the Art
Building represent-
ing Pegasus led by
History and Music,
Signor Rtzziypn. Sc.
The Mendicants.
were by the Vienna
sculptor, Pilz. We
select another Aus-
trian work for illus-
tration, and take a
humble domestic
scene, opining that
our readers will be
ready to descend from
the Pegasus of Pilz
and the Venetian
spendors of Cather-
ine Cornaro to see
what more familiar
fare Vienna art can
offer him. Here it
is, simple and genu-
ine as Vienna bread,
a rustic group listen-
ing to "Grandmoth-
er's Tales," in the
picture of Edmund
Blume (page 165).
The background is
the familiar porcelain
stove. On the bench built around it the grand-dame is sitting, — her spinning-
wheel stopped, — the flaxen thread floating down out of her fingers as the
interest of the narrative culminates. The tale, in its progress, has passed
through the reminiscences of infancy, which are for little Rahel, sitting rapt
with her baby-wagon ; past the epoch of school-days, which are for young Fritz
2o8 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
as he leans against the stove; and has attained the period of universal interest,
the history of love, which the old woman is sensible enough to address, without
any pretence of beating around the bush, direct to Gretchen, who will under-
stand it. " His eyes were blue, my dear, his hair was golden." And so on,
through the eternal, interminable idyl, which to girls like Gretchen is never
long, and perpetually new. The painter's joke in all this is the paradox about
the thread of the story and the thread of the spinning-wheel. When an ancient
gossip reaches the period of what Disraeli calls "anecdotage," the line of flax
is often forgotten and is forever in jeopardy; but the line of talk, supernatu-
rally sustained, spins on perpetual, endless, invulnerable !
From the excellent Munich school, which in a single generation has sprung
up into a formidable rival to Paris, we select for illustration a delightful picture,
painted in 1S75, by Sigmund Eggert. It is called "A Visit to the Village
Artist," and is engraveci by us on page 153. Here we are in the ground-floor
work-room of one of those humble Raphaels, common enough in Catholic
Europe, who paint nothing but saints for churches. Even the tiny child,
neglecting her doll, plays with a litde picture of a real saint, with a real halo.
The light that comes througli the bull's-eye panes falls on nothing but martyrs
and holy men and women, who swarm upon the walls, stand upon the dresser,
and rear up against the jack-towel. The artist, a lean and slippered pantaloon,
is receiving a call from some village magnates — the teacher of the seminary
and a couple of baretoot monks. The critical e.xpression of the first, as the
painter exhibits a sacred picture larger, and consequently holier, than any in
his stock, is e.xquisite. Against the doorway lean the pictures commonly seen
in Catholic churches, representing the "Stations," or pauses, on the road to
Calvary; that which is most plainly visible is the Fainting under the Cross.
Behind the artist is a wooden statue — some bishop of happy memory — painted
in the brightest colors which the adjacent palette and bunch of brushes can
supply. Everything here is routine and custom — the artist's most pious inspi-
rations savor quite too much of the tracing and the stencil, and the decorous
critics are people of routine too. and contemplate the most awful subjects in
this museum of martyrs with professional sang-froid. The artist has interpreted
very slyly and delicately one of the quaint scenes — or rather one of the quaint
behind the scenes — afforded by rural Catholicism in the old Fatherland.
FINE ART. 209
A picture of real religious interest, which we approach with anything but
levity, is the large and pathetic composition by Ernest Slingeneyer, of Brussels,
entitled "A Christian Martyr in the Reign of Diocletian." We present a fine
engraving on page 125. Fortunately, this important work, the most remarkable
contribution made by Belgian art to religion of late years, is so widely and
admiringly known that our task in describing it is almost a sinecure. Some
of the visitors to the Centennial had already seen the painting in the London
Exhibition of 1862. Many others were familiar with the fine steel print by
Demannez. The story told by the two principal figures, which are life-size, is
appallingly simple. We are in Ancient Rome — the Coliseum is crowded. The
lighter preliminary plays are over, and now comes the exhibition ot the bestiarhcs,
or fighter with beasts. The slave opens the gateway of the den where are
confined the lions in their cashes, the human antajjonists on their beds of straw.
In the present case the brutal slave pauses surprised — for the victim is sweetly
sleeping! He is a poor Christian boy, given up naked to the fury of the
beasts and the Roman lust for blood ; his only wealth is the reed crucifix, the
symbol of triumphant martyrdom. He grasps his cross, and is not afraid to
sleep. The rolling applause of the people in the amphitheatre beyond — the
more disturbing stealth of the pacing beasts, going softly about the cages on
their velvet feet, — nothing has prevented that innocent, that divine slumber,
precursor of the eternal repose on high. In another hour a little troop of
humble people — his Christian friends — will be permitted to visit the spoliarium
or dead-room of the circus ; they will find a mangled body, the ruins of life and
strength in a wreck of bones and flesh ; they will be allowed to compose the
shattered limbs, to wash the red skin white again, and bear the martyr away
to his obscure grave in the catacombs. Such mercy Rome could allow to the
body whose living thoughts and opinions she felt bound to crush — as foreseeing
that they contained the elements of her own dissolution. Christianity was bound
to dissolve the government of Caesar ; therefore Caesar, in the natural instinct
of self-defence, must do what he can against the Christian while it is yet time,
for the day is coming when Christianity will obliterate Caesar. In dismissing,
almost without description, M. Sllngeneyer's important picture, we would merely
recall what has often been pointed out by its admirers, the admirable manage-
ment of the light, which relieves the hot glare of the circus against the deep
212 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
shadows of the cell, and allows one thread of intense sunshine to cross the
knees of the martyr, so often bent in prayer. We would point out, too, through
all the stark simplicity of two nude forms, how plainly shows the difference
between the heavy brutality of the attendant and the distinction of the young
Christian's figure, in its unconscious erace.
American art, not yet able to compete with that of European centres in
producing great figure-subjects, can best sustain comparison in works of marine
painting. In this line several of our artists have evinced peculiar powers of
perception and execution. Our selection of masterpieces contains three works
of decided excellence in marine or water-side study, which may be put with
some confidence beside the works of even able French painters, because the
ablest French painter can seldom look at the sea (at least from a vessel) with-
out becoming ill, and therefore cannot represent it sympathetically.
"Fog on the Grand Banks," by \V. E. Norton, of Boston, is a painting
whose very peculiar impressiveness steals on you after a period of contempla-
tion. The picture is filled with a sense of vapor — air evenness, a clearness of
mist, not too heavy, which makes a unity of everytliing in sea and sky. We
venture to compare it with a clearness, because it simplifies vision, discards the
emphasis of heavy shadow, and expands a subtle light over the whole face of
nature. Through this clear-obscure, the distant sails, the top of the light-house,
are faintly sketched. And out of the zenith of this purity of haze drops one
furtive ray, just catching in the bows of the nearest vessel, whose sails are
piled, like a mountain of marble, high into the sky. We have given a steel
engraving of this very expressive picture.
A fine coast-scene, with which our engraver has been uncommonly lucky,
is the view of Genoa, by George L. Brown, likewise a Bostonian. By slightly
emphasizing the radiance of the sun and its reflection, beyond the emphasis
used in the painting, the burin has arranged an effect of values compensating
ior the pictorial effect of colors in the original, which of course was beyond its
grasp. Genoa is known to every picture-lover by the oft-painted amphitheatrical
view ot its crescent of buildings as observed from the sea. Its aspect from a
near point of land is rather fresh and unfamiliar. Mr. Brown has arranged his
details with great skill, the bouquet of trees and old tower to the left forming
an excellent balance for the setting sun and its trail of glory on the other side
fa
fe
Q
.^
Benjamin ^^'esc, Pinx.
Christ Blessing Little Childrc
y. I.^v.„t!U. L,,^.
214 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
of the picture. The breadth of water, which ahnost gives tlie painting tlie right
to be called a marine, recedes successiully from the eye, with a perfect sense
of knowing its riyht level.
Compare with either of these the "Lake George" of the late John F.
Kensett (page 52), in which, by-the-by, the proportion of water is of the smallest.
We are here in the presence of a talent formed upon the old English models.
Treatment of sky, treatment of breadths of lake or ocean, treatment and
drawing of trees, all recall the style of certain English water-colorists contem-
porary with Stanfield. Throughout his career Kensett worked in oils with the
traditions of water-color and distemper painting, and his best canvases have a
thin look in comparison with those of men who have used a more generous
impasto. In compensation, his works reveal a singular sense of space and
purity, his skies and sea-beaches seem uncontaminated, large and austere. The
delicate intricacy of his touch in foliage is partly indicated by our cut. Kensett
was born in 181 8, studied at first in England (after an apprenticeship to the
engraver Dagget), and learned to sketch foliage by practising in Windsor
Forest. He died December 14th, 1872. His paintings are highly prized by
Americans, and with justice. His work has more freshness and realism than
that of Cole, and attracts to the study of Nature by a certain Wordsworthian
breadth and dignity of feeling.
In the honorable history of American sculpture few names have stood
higher than that of William Wetmore Story; yet we think it cannot be denied
that the more intelligent art-lovers, who had heard his fame reported from that
Italian capital where he has lived so long, were somewhat disappointed in the
works he exhibited at the Centennial — his "Medea" and "Beethoven." Mr.
Story's residence abroad has been under circumstances agreeable and perilous
to an artist — he has kept within the circle of American and English colonists
at Rome. Here, in the receipt and exercise of good-hearted hospitality, visited
by American newspaper-correspondents apt to see the best side of everything
American, or by English writers attracted by his eminent literary qualifications
and by the facts of his matrimonial connection — Mr. Story has long enjoyed the
fatal sweets of a common admiration-society. Those who remember his delicate
and pathetic filial tribute at INIount Auburn — a portrait figure of his father, the
celebrated Judge Story, cut with a most patient and sensitive chisel — will per-
f
^
■^^
/'■ ~.
'" ^ -'mms{iAkii§ii§^^^^^^^
v. S.UttenaUaaallzluiitLoiilSTe.
MKUJE^o
KEBBIE aBABETE .
^./yujil- IS77
FINE ART.
215
haps think he would
have done better to
have remained in an
American atelier.
The "Medea" (which
we have engraved
on steel) in common
with the "Semiram-
is," "Sibyl" and
"Cleopatra," is a
work which some-
how convinces the
spectator of the
bookish culture of
its author ; and so
far it is well ; we
feel that he has ap-
proached his con-
ception through lit-
erature. As we look
upon the towering
and monumental fie-
o
are of the murder-
ess-mother, through
whose head a whole
Fifth Act of stormy
emotions seems
sweeping, we feel
that the statuary has
compacted his theo-
ries after intimate
acquaintance with
Rome scarcely ever hears severe, healthy criticism
Munich, who sees the measure of his success as in
J tj- jjpi IxhmjilU .lilJ
the tragedy of the
Greek Euripides,
and that of the Ro-
man Seneca. Amere
bookman, as in the
case of all this sculp-
tor's figures, is
strongly prepossess-
ed in contemplating
the work. An art-
proficient, however,
looks for technicali-
ties ; and it must be
confessed that in
matters of manipu-
lation, flesh-texture,
the hinges of the
bones, the stress of
muscle, the drawing,
and playing of the
skin, and other such
requisites, — an art-
ist's want of ease in
which is like a coun-
tryman's want of
ease m grammar
A. Tantarduii, Sculpt.
The Reader.
or spelling, — Mr.
Story's work lacked
any very high dis-
tinction. HoAV could
it be otherwise? The
American artist in
Unlike the American artist in
a mirror in the publicity of art-
2i6 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
comradeship, in the enthusiastic appreciation ot his Bavarian fellow-artists, and in
the discriminating encouragement of his professor — unlike the American artist at
Paris, for whom the harsh grunts of the maitre and the merciless irony of the
"school" quickly distinguish every fault and weakness — the Yankee at Rome is a
little king, a great diner-out, a frequenter of "At Homes" and "Thursdays," one
of the sights of the city, and a power that may be cultivated or neglected, but
never weighed. Mr. Story has brought a better list of results out of this
unfavorable soil than might have been expected. The unmistakable seal of
book-culture on a work of art will always make it interesting to literary
people; and Mr. Story's "Medea" and "Cleopatra," his "Jerusalem" in the
Philadelphia Academy, his "Semiramis" and "Sibyl," are overgrown with this
creeping feeling of legend and tradition : no ignorant, unread man would ever
have conceived them so. As for the "Medea," we see her stand, as a female
trao-edian on the staee, the orimness of murder in her attitude and gesture,
while the bleeding victims, according to the nice taste of the Greek drama, are
out of sight. One hand grasps the dagger ; the other, which has been sup-
porting her chin, is still clenched, as the head is lifted with the firmness of a
new-born purpose. This is that Medea — somewhat Americanized, as we fancy,
in type and visage — who stood before the Greeks in many a theatre, the
embodiment of jealousy and feminine revenge : the mother who could destroy
her offspring because their father had left her to wed another. We need hardly
remind the reader of the facts of the old classic story. The murder of Mer-
merus and Pheres, the children of Jason by Medea, is said by a Roman writer
to have been really committed by the Corinthians. Finding that Corinth suffered
in consequence, in reputation and by the scourge of pestilence, the inhabitants
of that city engaged Euripides, for five talents, to write a tragedy which should
clear them of the murder, and represent Medea as the assassin of her own
children. The ruse was a perfect success ; Corinth was rehabilitated, and the
poetic version has obtained credit with the remotest posterity, to the present
time ; and, more wonderful than all, Euripides' fiction must have imposed upon
Jupiter himself, who seems to have promptly stopped the pestilence. Jason's
posterity by his second or Corinthian wife, Creusa, doubtless became the aris-
tocracy of that city, able to give the best possible reasons for their father's
having selected their mother as a resource from that violent, impracticable
FINE ART.
217
Medea: and they doubtless enjoyed without hesitation their fortune derived from
the golden fleece, though it was all earned by Medea ior their father. Mr.
Story, the sculptor of the "Medea," has just had the peculiar good luck of
seeing five of his largest statues at once sold and boxed up in his atelier for
delivery in a single
week. The other
day his "Delilah"
was thus encased,
awaiting transpor-
tation to Calitornia
to its purchaser,
Mr. Shilliber; while
a copy of his "Cleo-
patra," with the
"V'esta," "Alces-
tis," "Libyan Sibyl"
and "Cleopatra"
were being packed
for the Ponipeiian
Palace in Paris, for-
merly Prince Na-
poleon's, now the
Hungarian Count
Palffy's, who now
owns both the man-
sion and these val-
uable fiyures. We
>^y/^/t^ ^
Cyprien Godebski, Sculpt. From a dra-wing by the artist.
Moiijik Ivi-f.
cannot take leave
ot this statue with-
out a reference to
the question of
damage done to
works of art in
the Exposition, of
which unfortunate-
ly the "Medea"
offered an example.
The knife in the
right hand, though
elevated above the
height of a man's
head by the dimen-
sions of the pedes-
tal, was broken off
at the hilt — a dis-
aster easily repair-
ed. The other in-
juries, very few,
considering that
the
rooms were
generally not at first surrounded with railings, and that the crowds could not
be deprived of their umbrellas and sticks, were as follows: The Italian statue
"After the Bath," by Malfatti, had the middle and ring fingers broken ; the
remaining fingers, extended, accordingly represented a superstitious and vulgar
gesture in use among the lower Italians. The outrage was probably therefore
committed by an enemy and a native of Italy. Another Italian statue, "The
Reader" (439), had the little book broken off, doubtless by a relic-liunter in
2i8 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, 1 8 j 6.
want of a paper-weight. In the Austrian department, a panel-picture called
"Children's Tenderness," by Berres, was scratched, and the great "Catherine
Cornaro," by Makart, was blistered, both owing to defective packing. Among
the German pictures, that of the Crown Prince had a hole pierced through the
thigh, and one other canvas was slighdy marked. These, with a trifling damage
to a single American painting in the Art-Annex, comprise the sum of the mud-
lations, and on the whole form a high testimonial to the good manners of an
almost uncontrolled American crowd.
The fame of the Spanish school of art, which has been revived of late
years by the dazzling success of Fortuny and his fellows, caused a deep and
perhaps an exaggerated interest to be taken in the hardly adequate exhibit
made at Philadelphia. The picked works of Spanish art, to the number of
forty-six, occupied a room in Memorial Hall, while about two hundred less
select examples were arranged in the Art-Annex and in the Spanish Govern-
mental Pavilion in the Park. Amono; the choicer selections, which ranged from
the religious works of Alonzo Cano and Morales, and the figure-subjects of
Velasquez and Spagnoletto, to the "Two Friends" of Agrassot and the "Jeanne
la Folle" of Valles, we choose the pathetic example of Morales seen in our
steel engraving. Luis Morales was born at Badajoz in 1 509, and died there in
1586. His life, addicted to the most ascetic kind of sacred art, was not a
prosperous one, and when Philip II, shortly before fitting out the Invincible
Armada for the conquest of England, happened to travel through Badajoz, a
gleam of remorse passed through his not often remorseful heart on finding
Morales, whom he had commanded to decorate the Escorial and then forgotten,
suffering from penury, age and neglect. He amended his unpressed orders
about the Escorial by paying him a pension without commanding any work in
return. Morales thus enjoyed for the remaining five years of his life an annuity
of three hundred ducats. He was called "The Divine," from the uniformly
religious character of his subjects, and is sometimes termed the Spanish Peru-
gino. His style indeed allies him to this and other "pre-Raphaelite" masters,
for he exhibits the anxious care in copying nature, the minuteness, and the
trace of hardness, which characterized the predecessors of the grand Urbinate,
and which are imitated by the English inventors of the term. It shows, liow-
ever, how topsy-turvy in regard to dates, and how thoroughly Independent and
L'JIS MORALES SIDT
MAtI,LErEP..5t.
-ritenisliimal JEJ!liiMlioiL.1876
ECCE H
FINE ART. 219
original and siii generis was the career of Spanish art, that this "early" master,
this exenipliher of the style that preceded Raphael, was literally a post-
Raphaelite. In his painting- of the " Ecce Homo," the cross which the suffering
Saviour bears is a microscopic copy of a just hewn piece of timber, with all
the fibres, from which the sap seems to have scarcely dried, assiduously painted
like a bit of wood-grainer's work. Just so would Holman Hunt, or any other
modern emulator of the pre-Raphaelite masters, delight in painting. The whole
style of this picture, both in its quaintly exact drawing and in its pure naive
color, reminds us of John Bellini or of Perugino ; yet Morales comes into the
calendar of painters long after Bellini and Perugino, born respectively in 1422
and 1446. He is even considerably later in date dian Raphael and Titian; for
he survived them both thirty or forty years, and first saw the light in the six-
teenth century, while they were born in the fifteenth. Fine specimens of "El
Divino Morales" may be seen in the University of Salamanca, justifying, says
Augustus J. C. Hare, the title of Morales to be called the Spanish Perugino
which late ages have accorded him as an honor, but which Morales himself, in
his high Iberian pride, would have rejected as degrading.
Mr. George H. Boughton, like Leslie and Benjamin West, is a gift of
America to England ; he has developed, without seriously changing it, the style
he formed in this country, and is now pleasing with the results of American
art-lessons the most cultured classes of the old world. Mr. Bouo-hton, at three
years of age, was brought to the United States, his parents being residents of
Norwich, England. His youth was passed at Albany in New York, and already
during his early lite he impressed upon the American public a conviction that
a painter of uncommonly delicate and refined powers had arisen. One of his
patrons was Mr. August Belmont, who now exhibits in his gallery "The Lake
of the Dismal Swamp," our artist's early American work, in which it is easy to
recognize the wonderfully subtle landscape feeling which still pervades the
achieved masterpieces of this admirable painter. In the year 1853 Mr. Boughton
went to visit the family friends in Old England, being then nineteen years of
age. After some desultory wanderings and studies, he at length definitively
abandoned his American studio in i860, and passed to France, where he received
instructive hints in art matters from the accomplished genre painter Edouard
Frere. He presently crossed the Channel and setded his artistic lares and
fUi
J
J ^ J
/U, /
^^
/
I I ?
^
K
\-
SE-^^—^XtVi
'-■^tfe.'^
n.
\\\ My') " l*«£.<iX4i,
)j y 7- -■>
Wv<s^*
"-'^
^*53
.-'''SaVjB-^
Laoi
f-mile BretCH, Pinx.
.4 Ullage of Artois in Whiter.
FINE ART. 221
penates in London, where he still resides. The first picture of Mr. Boughton's
which made a sensation in England was "Passing into the Shade," exhibited at
the British Institute in 1863, and representing two old peasant women entering
the gloom of a forest, which symbolized, with that fine adaptation of landscape
sentiment to human feeling which Mr. Boughton has made a specialty, the
autumnal shadow of life. The specimen of which we offer an engraving (pages
194-5) is taken, with the largest and best class of the ardst's works, from the
history of the Puritans in New England, which seems to have impressed Mr.
Boughton as forcibly, considered as a repertory of art-effects, as it did Haw-
thorne the novelist. Our selection is entitled "New England Puritans going to
Church." It represents a train of wayfarers passing with solemn caution through
a snowy landscape, the men armed to the teeth, except the venerable pastor,
whose defences are the holy book he carries and the good angel who walks by
his side in the person of a lovely daughter. The especial inspiration of this
picture was the following passage from "Bartlett's Pilgrim Fathers": "The few
villages were almost isolated, being connected only by long miles of blind path-
way through the woods. . . . The cavalcade proceeding to church, the marriage
procession (if marriage procession could be thought of in those frightful days)
was often interrupted by the death-shot of some invisible enemy." Each figure
in the picture is seen against the snow — a sombre silhouette. Fathers, mothers
and innocent children proceed with serious. God-fearing expression through the
desolate landscape, ot which any tree may hide a savage enemy. It is strange
and touching to watch these earnest men, in their peaked hats and leather
jerkins, each with a Bible in his belt and a musket on his shoulder. .Such was
the terrible preparation which in those days was necessary tor worshipping the
Prince of Peace. Our larw eneravinof g-ives much of the austere charm of
t*his strange painting: it is easy to see, in the whole style of Mr. Boughton's
composition, the man of culture and broad historical ideas superadded to the
skilful painter. Every picture which leaves the tasteful studio at "Grove Lodge"
conveys this agreeable mixed impression, as if a delightful poet, a keen student
of men and events, and a man of high social position, had somehow got kneaded
into the clay of the gitted artist. Mr. Boughton has never forgotten the impres-
sions of his American life, and a large series of his most powerful works
represents the incidents of Pilgrim history, the finest undoubtedly being the
'e in Alsace.
:,:ncc:.n ^ ri.::y.En-y^
/■■
224 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
"Return of the Mayflower," to be seen in a Philadelphia gallery, — that of Prof.
Fairman Rogers. Owing to the mixed destiny w^hich makes Mr. Boughton at
once a sufficiently good Englishman and a very loyal American, his contribu-
tions to the Centennial Exposition became mixed through the works delegated
from both countries. The "Puritans goingf to Church" and his "Goine to Seek
his Fortune" were exhibited in the department of American art; his "God-
Speed," a large and important picture illustrating "Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,"
was exhibited in that of British paintings.
Our illustration on page 197 represents an Italian painting of merit, "Noon
in the Country," by Enrico Bartesago, a Milanese artist. From this faithful
transcript of actualities in the land of the Caesars it will be seen that the
Italian peasant of to-day by no means wears the rich pictorial costume to .be
found in those ideal pictures studied from Roman professional models — the
embroidered apron, the folded napkin on tlie head, the laced boddice and full
white sleeves for the women, the knee-breeches and goatskin jacket for the
men. Those garments are as false to nature as any costume got up for the
stage of the dieatre, and wdiat the Italian of the lower orders really looks like
is the dull, ill-dressed, slouching being seen in Bartesago's picture. Here is the
unadorned, ever\-day life of the contemporary contadino, which is a rather
sordid and squalid affair. The male laborers are apt to make the noontide
siesta a long chapter in tlielr existence, and lounge with every mark of satis-
lactlon beside the implements of their toil, their sense of comfort being
enhanced with all the piquancy of contrast by the sight of their wives going
on in a course ot labor which is heavy and unintermitted — for in Italy as well
as nearer home the proverb holds good that "women's work is never done."
Accordino-lv our artist sliows one matron wheelinof a barrow of turf another
bending beneath a shoulder-load of faggots, while a stalwart maiden bears a
basket, and another is industriously hanging clothes to dry on the winter hedge.
This picture Is a piece of good wholesome prose, a page of actual life tran-
scribed while the impression is fresh, and worth a great many canvases of
brigands or flower-girls copied from the vagabond actors and actresses who
lounge in the Piazza di Spagna in impracticable costumes.
Like most English paintings unsatisfactory In color, the noble design and
monumental composition of \\ C. Prinsep's "Death of Cleopatra" make this
FINE ART.
225
picture peculiarly suited to the effects of engraving, and justify the ample
translation into black and white which we give of it on pages 202-3. It is a
vivid reflection from one of the most impressive pages of Plutarch : " Cleo-
E, Trojnbetta, Sculpt
The First Step.
patra/' says the versatile old historian, who ever seems to laugh or cry at need,
according to the burden of his subject, "has erected near the temple of Isis
some monuments of extraordinary size and magnificence. . . . Cleopatra sent
a letter to Caesar, and, ordering everybody out of the monument except her
226 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
two women, she made fast the door. . . . They found her quite dead, lying- on
her golden couch, and dressed in all her royal ornaments. Iras, one of her
women, lay dead at her feet, and Charmion, hardly able to support herself, was
adjusting her mistress's diadem. One of Caesar's messengers said angrily,
'Charmion, was this well done?' 'Perfectly well,' said she, 'and worthy a
descendant of the kings of Egypt.' She had no sooner said this than she fell
down dead." Mr. Prinsep omits the incident of the asp, except so far as it is
suggested by the overturned basket of figs at Iras's feet. Cleopatra, with no
wound or scar upon the shapely fulness of her arm, sits on a deep-seated chair
or throne before a tripod, on which incense is burning to the manes of Antony;
laurels load this portable altar in memory of the warrior, and flowers and gar-
lands in his honor decorate the scene. In the background, behind the Egyptian
idol, is the doorway which will quickly give entrance to the emissaries of Octa-
vius. The queen, stately and superb in death, has just leaned her head back,
with perfect grace, on the throne, upon which the tottering Charmion supports
herself, while Iras, a beautifully posed and foreshortened figure, curls around
her mistress's feet with fond canine fidelity. The picture has the decorous,
measured harmony of a fine bas-relief.
Another British artist, Mr. William Ouiller Orchardson, contributed to the
Exhibition an admirable figure-subject, called "Prince Henry, Poins and Falstafif"
— as well as the beautiful marine view, which we have already illustrated, of
"Moonligfht on the Laeoons of Venice." An excellent understanding of Shakes-
peare is evinced in this painter's treatment of the scene with "the wild Prince
and Poins," which we Illustrate on page 205. We need but call to mind those
passages of "Henry IV" which earliest Introduce us to the fat knight, to per-
ceive the full adequacy of Mr. Orchardson's Interpretation. Falstaff Is brought
to notice for the first time as a seedy hanger-on about the royal palace in
London, declaring that to be a hangman would jump with his humor as well
as waiting In the court, and Idly thinking to make capital out of the brewing
rebellion of Douelas and Owen Glendower. To lisjhten the drama which Is
dedicated to such great events, Shakespeare creates the colossal jest of the
sham highway-robbery at Gadshill ; and our artist delineates Its Inception. The
madcap Prince is flinging his wild oats abroad, thinking little of his father's
cares, and adopting the incorrigible Falstaff" as his bear-leader; Poins is his
FINE ART.
chum, the Achates of this
^neas, the dissohite Horatio
of this Hamlet out-of-mou ru-
ing. In the palace guard-
room is the fine project ot the
amateur highwaymen hatched.
Poins bursts in with the news,
"My lads, my lads, early to-
morrow morning, at Gadshill,
there are pilgrims going to
Canterbury with rich offer-
ings . . . we may do it as se-
cure as sleep ! If you will go,
I Avill stuff your purses full
of crowns ; if you will not,
tarry at home and be hanged!"
The Prince listens, and de-
murs, and consents. "Who,
I?_rob?— I a thief? Not I,
by my faith," he says at first ;
and a moment after, "Well,
then, once in my days I'll be
a madcap." In another minute
he is for giving up the scheme,
upon which Falstaff leaves the
half-hearted robber for Poins
to operate on alone. This is
the moment chosen by the
painter. Falstaff turns his
broad back upon the pair of
wild lads, with a devout invo-
cation to Heaven that the
Prince may become a thief:
and young Henry calls after
E. y. PoyttUr, A. K. A., Pttix,
Apelles.
228 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
him, "Farewell, thou latter spring, farewell, all-hallown summer!" The brace of
untamed spirits form a group at the left, and a broad space of wall, which
somehow links the composition together instead of introducing a dissonance,
intervenes between them and the huge knight, who leaves the scene with the
waddling motion common to women of the people and plethoric men of quality.
We know how it will turn out — that Falstaff and his rabble will commit the
robbery, to be in turn robbed by Prince Henry, upon which the old rogue will
invent his magnificent tale of being set upon by eleven men in buckram. Mr.
Orchardson's composition is original, peculiar and singularly artistic, notwith-
standing that it is of the flat order, with little depth and no perspective in
particular. It is like one of those intermediate scenes in a theatrical act, played
against a wall, while carpenters are operating behind for the next grand set-out
that will show how deep the stage is. The varied powers evinced in this figure-
subject and the "Lagoons of Venice" give an interest to the biography of the
painter. Mr. Orchardson is an Associate of the Royal Academy ; he was born
in Edinburgh in 1835, and is consequently forty-two years of age; his portraits
were noticed in an exhibition of the Scottish Academy so early as 1861 ; he
came to London in 1863; his "Christopher Sly" was favorably regarded in the
Paris International Exposition of 1867; the present picture of "Falstaff, Poins
and Henry" was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868.
The group illustrated on page 207 — "The Beggars," by R. Galli, of Milan —
stands out conspicuously from the generality of Italian sculpture by a whole-
some severity of style, and the entire absence of ornament. It is refreshing
at length to find an Italian carving that is not baroqit-e. The mother and child
in this group are clothed from head to foot. The modest and rigid drapery of
the woman falls in perpendicular folds, skilfully broken by the gesture with which
she catches up her apron to her bosom, in a bashful way, while she almost
hides the contribution-cup which mendicants of a bolder sort protrude so
officiously. The little boy, whose lithe Italian figure is quite lost in the rough
bunchy roundabout and trowsers bungled by the unskillful needle of poverty,
is provided with a good large hat for collection-taking, but he does not proffer
it. The traditions of a wholesome family piety, as this is understood in Italy,
are evinced in the talismans worn by both — the cross hung around the neck
of the boy, and the sacred medal on the bosom of the woman. Just as these
FINE ART.
229
timid poor folk
appeal to the
heart by their
ignorance of the
brazen art of
beggary, so the
sculptor is at
some advantage
over his decora-
tive compeers by
his inability or
intentional nes-
lect to follow the
lines of beauty
and the o-rimaces
of grace.
Another Italian
piece of sculp-
ture,Tantardini's
"Reader" (page
215), though con-
ceived in a vein
which does not
admit of such ab-
solute simplicity
as the last, is
likewise distin-
guished by a
search after re-
pose and the
absence of mere-
tricious orna-
ment. A patri-
cian maiden, at
/ . y P.ynt^f. A, k..l . Pn
The Fcstivat.
once stately and
simple, is seen
walking slowly
forward readings
a letter. Her
dress, of antique
cut, moulds with-
in its narrow
closeness the
firmness of the
fair young torso,
and touches of
embroidery and
a hem of lace
give accent to
its strictness here
and there. The
beautifully -mod-
eled head, wear-
ing only the
honors of its
abundant hair, is
slightly bent over
the written page.
The spectator
thinks of Ophelia
receivino- the eel-
o
ebrated love-let-
ter, "Oh, dear
Ophelia, I am ill
at these num-
bers ; I have not
art to reckon my
groans — but that
230 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
I love thee best, O most best, believe it." We prefer this figure to the same
artist's "Bather," engraved on page 72.
A very different artistic problem is that which M. Cyprien Godebski pro-
poses to himself. His "Drunken Moujik" (page 217) is an effort in the
direction of the closest realism. This disheveled head is tottering with drunken-
ness— not the fiery drunkenness of excitable Southern lands, but the colossal,
concentrated stupor of Russia. This broad pug nose has been dipped for hours
in the cup of kivas, that foaming brown beer which the brewer of Moscow
knows how to make out of soaked crusts of black rye bread. The narrow
forehead and the broad Tartar cheek-bones reveal the nationality of this help-
less subject, whom the artist has succeeded in catching from the very life. The
spirit of the reproduction is surprising; the stupid glance of the dim eyes, the
helpless roll of the heavy head, have been caught, as it were, on the wing ;
for once the marble has contrived to play the part of the instantaneous photo-
graph. Of this odd and characteristic study we are enabled to offer our
readers the artist's own record. The sketch is from M. Godebski's hand ; and,
though it may look rough and uncouth to a public spoiled by the professional
smoothness of the ordinary engraver, to the artistic eye it is peculiarly precious.
The lines of expression, the indications of texture, are all authentic and at first
hand. Every touch tells, and the draughtsman contrives, by simply changing
from a contiguous to a jagged stroke, to express the difference between the
long brush-like hair of the scalp and the matted and filthy beard, cemented
with icicles and spattered mud during a whole month's drive in the three-
horse troika. We are glad to vary, with work of a very different nationality
and complexion, the full exhibit we feel bound to make of Italian statuary.
M. Godebski exposed this bust among the contributions from Belgium ; he is,
however, something of a cosmopolitan, being an academician of Saint Peters-
burg, and residing at present at Neuilly, on the outskirts of Paris. He was
born in 1835.
On page 225 we give an engraving of a Milanese piece of sculpture, by
Signor Trombetta, who sent less of his work than many of his compatriots of
Italy, but of whose artistic and agreeable style we should like to see more
examples. It is called "The First Step" — or, as an inscription on the base, in
the cosmopolitan language of France, expresses it, "Tihibaiite" or "Toddling."
FINE ART.
231
The simple grace
of this figure jus-
tifies our return
to the oft-iHus-
trated sculpture
of Italy. A charm-
ing- little srirl,
whose short skirt
is artfully drop-
ped from one
shoulder so as to
reveal as much
as possible of her
fair chubby per-
son, is hovering
over a chicken
which she wants
to catch, and
which steps about
with the distract-
ing uncertainty
and ubiquity and
elusive fortuitous
way of chicken-
kind from time
im memorial.
When you stoop
for a chicken that
looks as if it had
made up its mind
to stay in that
particular spot
for a competent
length of time,
/
1 1/
J^iilllllllll^ I i^_ ^^-?-^'<:
J-. y. PoyuUr, Pinx.
The Golden Age.
the chicken is
suddenly gone,
and is picking
nonchalantly for
food in a spot
just alongside.
This wily beha-
vior of chicksy's
will directly bring
our youthful
sportswoman
down upon all-
fours in a state
of ruin ; and the
downy fledgeling,
not much more
secure on its feet
than its pursuer,
will go on with
the game, with
inexhaustible rel-
ish and enjoy-
ment, as far as
baby pleases, or
as the barn-yard
extends. Is there
not somediing
strange and baf-
fling about the
shyness, the air of
"keep -your- dis-
tance," in many
domestic crea-
tures? Wherever
232 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
man settles on the globe, they follow him, and thrive only in his close com-
panionship ; but they never permit a real personal intimacy or contact, and they
keep up, in the very warmth and tenderness of the snuggest human home, the
untamable Diana-like reserve implanted with their earliest ancestors in the wild-
wood. The distance which this little chick instinctively maintains between its
wee self and the baby's gathering grasp is symbolical of the distance between
ourselves and the vast inexplicable heart of Nature — between, shall we say, the
civilized gods of Olympus and the wild and mighty Pan. The firm-set barrier
between two races of Heaven's creatures — a barrier thawinsf but never warmine —
is what Trombetta's pretty symbol expresses, and is well defined in the cold
material of sculpture. But sculpture has detained us long enough for the
present, and we will turn our attention again to the pictures.
It is high time now that we should represent another work of Benjamin
West's, a painter who has a peculiar function in connecting the art of Philadel-
phia with that of the old world. While the Queen and the Royal Academy
respectively lent to the Exposidon his "Death of Wolfe" (engraved by us on
page 53) and "Christ Blessing Little Children" (page 213), and his "Moses
Striking the Rock" was placed by an American owner in the Twelfth Gallery
of the Art-Annex, these achievements of his maturity were contrasted with the
crude portrait-work of his youth, in specimens e.xhibited in the city museums,
not to say in the houses of city families, representing the half-dozen years he
supported himself as a likeness-taker in Philadelphia. The "Christ Blessing
Little Children" is an uncommonly agreeable specimen of West's occasionally
dry and formal style. There is, of course, not the slightest oriental cachet ahout.
it; the Hebrew mothers are English brides of the Mrs. Opie type, and a Roman
landscape and vault, derived from much study of Poussin, form the background ;
but the attitude of the Saviour is eminendy good, the carriage of his head is
free and noble, and there is a happy expression of movement about his figure.
St. Peter, who immediately receives the rebuke, is a fine and even a Jewish per-
sonage, and the graceful feet of the dandled child, and the confidence with which
he plays with the Saviour's hand as the latter points, are happily conceived.
There was much disposition, in the last decade, to ridicule West; but this feeling
has given way to one of greater justice, and it is conceded that, without being
endowed with the hot fire ofeenius which belongs to the innovators and
^
FINE ART. 233
creators in art, he exerted a valuable conservative influence in England for
nearly half a century, and evolved a vast life's work with energy and power.
We have already engraved, on page 76, a fine landscape of Emile Breton's,
and have described his curious rustic life on page 86. He sent another country
scene to Philadelphia, in its way not inferior to that we first engraved, and we
give our readers a representation of it on page 219, by a newly invented etching
process which capitally represents the quality of a sky charged with snow, and
of a perspective of white roois and slushy roads. "A Village in Winter" is
painted with infinite skill, in the style called in the latest slang of French studios
the "impressionist" style. No time is wasted in needless detail, but the effort
is to stamp, almost at a blow, the virgin imprint of a scene received by tlie
eye at its first glance. By recording this, in large, hasty, inspired touches, the
textures, qualities, reliefs, and colors of the principal masses in a scene are
fixed ; and if successful, a more vivid suggestion is produced than was always
possible by the old painful and highly-wrought methods. This picture of Breton's
gives the animus of a damp, snowy, heavy day. It makes the spectator feel
exactly as he felt the last time he had to go out in similar weather ; and this
involuntary feeling is just what many an exquisitely-wrought winter-piece never
gives at all, and is one of the highest triumphs of an artist. We breathe this
bitter weather. We take the water-mark, as it were, upon the pulp of the
spirit, and it is thenceforth indelible. It is a success that only a genuine artist
can achieve.
Having introduced Mr. Poynter, the English artist, to the good-will of our
readers with such a beautiful pleader as his "Ibis Girl" (the subject of one of
our most graceful steel-plates), we will e'en exhaust the contribution made by
this painter to the Philadelphia Fair, by introducing copies of his other works
seriatim. The sketch with an arched top on page 227 represents Mr. Poynter's
cartoon for a fresco to fill one of the spaces in an arcade at the South Ken-
sington Museum. To the British painter was confided as a subject a great
painter of old — "Apelles." The artist delineates his predecessor as a young-
Greek, standing in all the gallantry of life's early prime, his locks dark around
his broad forehead, an archaic decorated vase, representing the origin of Grecian
painting, at his feet. In his left hand is a square tablet, on which the waxen
colors were laid, and which led up in time to the modern palette. His left
Edmund M^rin, Pinx.
The MadeU
'■'lower- Ma rket.
,/■
236 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
hand rests upon his picture ot Venus Anadyomene. This is tlie first example
of the painter-courier — the retainer who mukipHes portraits of his royal patrons
through a lifetime, like Velasquez in the court of Philip IV. Apelles repre-
sented Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, and subsequently became the
portraitist allowed a monopoly of painting Alexander's likeness ; the conqueror,
and his horse, and his generals, he repeatedly delineated on the walls of Mace-
donian palaces. Apelles was initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, a mark of
culture and aristocracy. It was on the return from this sacred festival, in the
softly-rounded bay of Eleusis, that he saw Phryne, the most beautiful woman
in Greece, emerging from the sea and wringing out her locks upon the beach.
He thereupon painted Phryne as Venus, and again in his old age, at Cos,
endeavored to repeat the delineation on a more faultless scale of perfection,
and died before he could finish it. His repeated attempts to give the Grecians
an adorable Venus led our artist to represent a panel with this subject in the
hand of the most accomplished painter of antiquity. Mr. Poynter's cartoon,
with one or two more by other hands from the same series, occupied at Phila-
delphia a room entirely dedicated to South Kensington and its course of
instruction.
In the end of the long corridor which led to the little room containing
Frith's "Marriage of the Prince of Wales" — set up on either side of the door
like panels, and very neatly fitting the space — were Mr. Poynter's "Festival"
and "Golden Age," of which we present engravings on page 229 and page 231.
Notwithstanding the bricky flesh-color — so little like English flesh, of all flesh
in the world — which pervaded almost completely the exhibit of British paintings,
and was very conspicuous with Mr. Poynter, his pictures pleased, on account of
their elegant drawing, their happy subjects, and their fortunate and becoming
position. "The Festival" represented two graceful Greek maids of the antique
times, dressing with garlands an Ionic portico, perhaps for the reception of a
bride. The "Golden Age" showed again a pair of figures, this time both males.
Two lads were gathering pears into a basket from an overburdened tree. The
period was so early that they had not yet invented much costume, and their
primeval energy had seemingly exhausted itself in constructing the ladder with
which they reached the fruit, and the basket into which they piled it. The
harmony of lines was very satisfactory in these pictures, but most particularly
IIIIIUIIIIIIIUI
llllill' ,/,
238 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
so in the female subject ; and in this, again, the draperies were of faultless and
even conspicuous beauty — light, complicated, natural and inventive, without a
particle of thai marble look which results when a painter of antique scenes lets
himself be too much enamored of antique statues. Our readers, we are sure,
will especially admire this happy classical subject of "The Festival," wherein
the two fair figures, closely intertwined, form Hogarth's line of beauty, or the
"long S."
Some writers tell us that Toledo was the cradle of Spanish art, fostered
by the wealthy churchmen of the metropolitan cathedral. Others say that Bar-
celona and Saragossa, from their early connection with Italy, through commerce,
were the first places in the peninsula to feel the influence of that country in
taste for art. Except for antiquarian purposes, it may be assumed, generally,
that the latter half of the fifteenth century was the period when Spanish art
began to assert itself in a more or less tentative way. The conditions of its
progress, however, were very different from those of any other school in Europe.
Elsewhere the revival of intellectual life was accompanied by an awakened
taste for the Greek and Roman classics and mythology, which supplied artists,
when they too appeared in the general movement, with an infinity of subjects
for inventive treatment.
No such opening presented itself to the Spanish painter. The political
history of his country debarred him from any knowledge even of the picturesque
and romantic beliefs of ancient nations. Everything that was not of Christian
origin had for ages been identified with the dominion of the Moors, aliens in
blood and in creed. Yet, little as the Spaniard would confess it, in every
department of secular learning, his country owed much to that Arab immigra-
tion which had brought in its train a knowledge of astronomy and its kindred
sciences, and through which even Greek philosophy' was once more restored to
Europe. But a feud, deadly and lasting, separated the native Spaniard from
the descendants of his ancient oppressors. What was not Christian was Moorish,
and therefore detested and avoided. Thus limited to a field of small dimen-
sions, revived art had no choice but to reproduce scenes in the history of
Christianity, or to paint portraits from the life ; and such, in fact, is a summary
of Spanish art-subjects, even of the period of its greatest eminence. Land-
scape, except as an auxiliary to sacred history and portraiture, is comparatively
FINE ART.
239
rare. Another efficient cause of the exclusively religious character which is
stamped on the art of Spain was the all-powertul and all-pervading influence
of the Inquisition, dwarfing and withering all originality, all invention, all thought
that dared to express itself except in the stereotyped forms permitted to a
nation that was held in perpetual leading-strings. Nay, even in religious art.
the rule of the
"Holy Office" was
maintained in a
series of regula-
tions as to the
treatment of such
subjects ; the col-
ors, the attitudes,
proper to various
classes of saints,
for example, were
all defined and
strictly enforced
under the eyes of
a hundred cen-
sors, who kept
watch on every
studio, on every
picture-dealer's
window. Nor was
the office of cen-
sor restricted to
sacred subjects.
The most rigid
prohibition of the
nude struck a di-
rect blow at all
attempts to repro-
duce scenes from
classical mythol-
ogy. A life school,
in the modern
sense, was not to
be thought of
Considerine the
o
systematic com-
pulsion under
which artists had
to work, it is a
matter of wonder
that they could
produce what they
did produce, when
thus laboring in
Cav. Ugo Zannoni, ^c.
Affection a?id Envy.
fetters. But so
it was ; and this
must ever be borne in mind, in estimating the productions of the Spanish
school.
Whatever may have been the earliest beginnings of painting in Spain, alter
the Gothic conventionalities were dropped, the history of its art practically
resolves itself into three divisions relating to as many chief centres or schools.
There was the school of Castile, originating at Toledo, at some imperfectly
240 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, iSj6.
ascertained date in the fifteenth century. As Madrid grew in importance, under
Phihp II and his successors, Toledo was superseded, as the art-centre, just as
Valladolid had ceased to be the poHtical capital ; and Madrid thenceforth gave
its name to the school of Castile. Then the school ot Andalusia, with its centre
at Seville, entered into rivalry with the other, both in the matter of its antiquity
and of the eminence of its painters. "The beautiful terra B/ziica'' says Sir
VV. Stirling Maxwell, "was prolific of genius. The country of Lucan, of Seneca,
of Trajan, and of Averroes, brought forth Vargas, Velasquez and Murillo."
Valencia o-ives its name to the third principal school ot Spain, which took
its rise from two foreign artists ; their nationality is disputed, but they executed
some important decorative work in the cathedral, near the close of the fifteenth
century. The school of Castile, also, on several occasions was indebted to the
visits of artists from Flanders and Italy. It remains a matter undecided whether
Titian actually visited Charles V in Spain, X)r whether dieir frequent intercourse
took place only at Bologna and other cities of Italy. Certain it is that the
intimate connection maintained during the reign of the Emperor, and that ot
his son, Philip, between Spain and Italy, introduced many works of the Italian
masters into the Peninsula, examples of which, at this day, adorn the National
Museum at Madrid.
Such were the chief schools, or art-centres, of Spain. They had this in
common, that they were all of them, more or less, connected with the art-
traditions of Italy, and all were alike distinguished by their severely devotional
character. The Church was their best patron ; and whether patron or not, the
Church took care to exercise a maternal superintendence of their style and
execution. It was under her direct command that Pacheco laid down this canon,
as his Arte dc la Pintura : "It is the chief end of the works of Christian art
to persuade men to piety, and bring diem to God." With so exclusive a motive,
how could painters much differ one from another? why should they ever dream
of leaving the beaten track ? In fact, many of them made a religious exercise
of their art ; like Fra Angelico, they prepared themselves, by the reception of
the eucharist, tor the commencement of an important work. Others were noted
for the austerity of their lives and practices. It is related of Vargas, not only
that he frequently used the discipline of the scourge, but that he kept a coffin in
his house, and used to lie down in it, from time to time, to meditate on death.
g
■a
FINE ART.
241
242 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Some of the painters were ecclesiastics, and of course saw everything
through an atmosphere of incense and with the plain-song's distant rrmrmur in
their ears. Can we wonder that this world and its interests counted for little
with those men, or that, as a rule, their conceptions, even of die future world,
were gloomy and monotonous, and unattractive to the taste of "Philistines"?
Wandering through the Spanish Court and glancing again at the "Ecce
Homo" by Morales, El Divino, one of the best specimens of his divine hand,
we remember the story of his smart repartee to the king, who, when passing
through Badajoz, was waited upon by Morales. "You are very old. Morales,"
remarked Philip. "Yes, sire, and very poor," was the reply. On which, the
king desired his treasurer to pay the artist a pension of two hundred ducats
"for his dinner." "And for supper, sire?" rejoined the old man — a word
of repartee which gained him another hundred ducats, as the story goes.
Morales was never out of Spain ; yet he managed to clothe his devotional
subjects with the feeling and expression associated with Italian art, and more
particularly with the school of Rome. The elaborate finish of his pictures,
always painted on panel, and the purity and grace of their composition, pro-
cured for Morales the tide of the Parmegiano of Spain. He seems to have
thrown his best and most characteristic work into representations of the Cru-
cifixion, and of the dead Redeemer on His Mother's knees, called a Pieta, in
Italy. Such a picture, among others of his, may be seen in the Spanish Gallery,
Louvre. The painter's finest works were formerly preserved in his native city,
but the French pioneers of civilization robbed it of four of them, and time and
repainting have ruined the rest. Others may be looked for even in compara-
tively obscure churches in Estremadura. "With Morales," says Sir E. Head,
"pure Christian feeling ceased in the school of Castile. His son and others
of his pupils imitated him with little success, yet so as to injure his reputation,
for their weak productions have not unfrequently been attributed to the master
himself."
While the Spanish section, considered as a whole, is most unsatisfactory, it
nevertheless contains a goodly number of \&ry superior pictures, and so far as
we are able to judge from these, the traditions of the noblest epoch of the art
of painting have survived in Spain with greater force than in any other country.
A considerable portion of the wall-space in the western gallerj' in the Memorial
FINE ART.
243
Hall allotted to the Spanish pictures is occupied by large works, and several
of them have merits of a very positive kind. Such pictures as "Torquato
Tasso Returning to the Monastery of San Onofie," by G. Maureta ; "The
A. Bartholdi, Sculp.
Tile Youn^ Vine-Grower.
Landing of Columbus," by D. Puebla ; "Christopher Columbus in the Monastery
of La Rabida," and "The Last Moments of Don Fernando IV, el Emplazado,"
by I. Casado, are of various degrees of badness, and may be dismissed with a
mere mention, while "The Landing of the Puritans in America," by A. Gisbert
244 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
although it is a better piece of work than the others named, is chiefly inter-
esting because no one hereabouts would ever have expected a Spanish artist
to choose such a theme. "The Landing of Columbus" (see sketch on Spanish
art view, page 241) is, or ought to be, an entirely congenial theme vi^ith a
Spanish painter, but "The Landing of the Puritans"— that is a very different
matter.
Of the paintings which demand notice on account of their merits, "The
Burial of San Lorenzo at Rome," by A. Vera, is one of the most important.
The Raphaelesque draperies and statuesque poses of the group which sur-
rounds the bier of the martyr are reminiscences of a former age and of a
style of artistic workmanship for which there is but a very limited demand in
these days. There is much eloquence in these figures, but they are expres-
sionless, and in seeking for repose the artist has drifted into inanity. The
figure of the dead deacon who has joined the noble army of martyrs is, how-
ever, very beautiful. Peacefulness, restfulness and bliss beyond the grave are
expressed in the slight smile that hovers about the half-parted lips, and it
needed not the aureole about the head to indicate that, having been faithful
until death, he has obtained his reward.
The sentiment which is so well expressed in this picture also finds expres-
sion in "The Translation of .St. Francis of Assisi," by B. Mercade. In this the
canvas is crowded with figures, a group of nuns being represented standing at
the foot of the couch, while at the head stands a bishop who is reading the
service lor the dead, and a number of ecclesiastics. Simply considered as a
composition, this is a very superior work. The story is effectively told, and
nearly all of the figures are admirable studies — those of the nuns in particular
being exceedingly fine. Among the individual figures, that of the acolyte beside
the bishop, who turns his head for a moment to look towards the spectators,
as if attracted by some occurrence in a distant part of the room, is worthy of
special praise.
"The Death of the Count of Villamediana," by M. Castellano, is a very
dramatic composition. We know nothing of the story, but the situation is
expressed with great force by the artist: and without knowing v.ho the Count
of Villamediana w^as, or what cause he died for, the spectator is able to enter
into the emotions of the crowd which congregates about his body. The dead
FINE ART. 245
man is represented as lying on tiie ground, in a pool of blood, under the shadow
of a gateway. Some one is examining his wound by the light of a lantern
held by an acolyte in attendance upon a stern-faced priest, who forms one of
the crowd gathered about the corpse. In the street beyond, a crowd of people
fill the windows and balconies of the houses, and it is evident that the death
of the Count has been preceded by a great turmoil of some kind. The gray
light in the street indicates that it is late in the afternoon of a dark and cloudy
day, and the different effects of light are most skillfully managed. This is cer-
tainly one of the best historical pictures in the Exhibition, and is especially
noteworthy trom the fact that, although it deals with such a subject, it is free
from any suspicion of sensationalism, and is marked by a dignity and a genuine
dramatic power such as we too seldom see in modern works of kindred
theme.
"The Insanity of Donna Juana of Castile," by L. Valles, of which we show
a sketch on the view of the Spanish section of the Art Gallery, page 241, is
also a very genuinely dramatic work. The heroine of this picture refused to
believe that her husband was dead, and would not permit his burial. The artist
has shown her after having swept away the flowers which had been placed upon
the dead man's pillow, making a gesture of silence to those who are pleading
with her. The figure of the mad woman is a thoroughly fine piece of painting,
but the other figures — especially that of the kneeling old man in the green
mantle — are rather commonplace. The artist has evidently expended his
energies upon the principal figure, and although he has told his story with
exceptional power, he has failed to achieve a work which will command unre-
ser\'^ed admiration.
The "Duel in the Seventeenth Century," which hangs above the north
doorway, is painted with much force, and the figure of the disarmed man who
is leaning against the wall is admirably drawn, and is most spirited in action.
The other figure, however, is not particularly good, and the pose certainly is
not the most expressive that the artist could have chosen.
One of the finest works in the section is that entitled "The Prayer," by
A. Munoz Degrain, although there are others that are superior to it in some
special qualities. In this a group of nuns are shown joining in the evening
services of a church adjoining their convent, irom which they are separated by
B. JVordenbur^. Pinx.
Wedding in a Su'
■I Country Church.
248 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
an iron grating. The sentiment of such a scene is expressed with much feUcity,
and simply as a tone study, the picture is one of remarkable merit.
Near this picture is "The Two Friends" — a little peasant girl asleep on
the ground, with a white kid beside her. This is a very clever work — a little
dingy in color, but finely drawn and skillfully handled.
The "Capuchin Monk before the Roman Conclave," by Francisco Jover,
has the appearance of being a very literal record of an interesting scene,
although it is lacking in picturesqueness. The Pope is shown seated on his
throne, surrounded by a number of ecclesiastical dignitaries, while before him
kneels a friar, who is apparently the subject of the paper which one of the
purple-clad personages is reading. All the figures are full of character and
individuality, and are doubtless very accurate portraits of the Pope and his
immediate councillors.
The "Choir of Capuchin Monks," by R. Navarette, is a remarkably fine
interior study, the subdued tones of the dimly illuminated apartment being
rendered most skillfully. The section, in addition to this pictu'-e, contains a
number of very interesting representations of interiors, the majority of which
are by Perez Pablo Gonzalvo. Of these, the largest and most elaborate is the
interior of the Cathedral of Saragossa.
Few of the landscapes in the Spanish section possess much merit. There
are a couple, however, in the west gallery in the Memorial Hall by Carlos D.
Haes, which are rather superior performances. They are entitled "Suburbs of
Madrid" and "Reminiscences of the Pyrenees." The subjects are similar —
blue mountains in the distance, a rich and ferdle country between them and
the spectator, and some broken ground in the foreground — and in each the
effect of a subdued sunlight such as would be due to a vapor-filled atmosphere,
is very happily expressed.
The American school of landscape-painting is the only one we can boast
of as possessing a strongly marked individuality. Our best landscape-painters
are at least original and distinctly American in their styles, even if in some
particulars they fail to accomplish all that is accomplished by their European
rivals. This is something to be grateful for, and there is no pleasanter task
that a visitor to the Art Department of the Exhibition can put before him than
to make a comparison between some of the best renderings of natural scenerj.'
FINE ART.
249
C. A. l-raikup, Sculpt.
The Yottng Mother.
250 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
of the American section and those of the French, Belgian, Austrian and ItaUan
sections.
In illustration of our comparison we would recommend to the attention of
our readers any of the paintings by American landscape artists illustrated in
our pages, especially the two steel engravings of paintings by James M. Hart
and J. F. Cropsey, named respectively "Landscape and Catde" and "The Old
Mill." Mr. Hart's picture bespeaks the earnest enthusiast in every detail of his
masterly work. The drawing and grouping of the cattle, the correct handling
of perspective and atmosphere, the pleasing result of light and shade, all stamp
the artist as a worker in the very first rank. "The Old Mill" of Cropsey
shows much of the best qualities common in Hart's ; but the treatment of the
water in the mill-stream is a little too sparkling, the sheen or gleam absorbing
the attention of the beholder to the exclusion of the patiently worked details
of the surroundings; though, on the whole, hardly equal to Mr. Hart's picture,
it is far above mediocrity.
Compare these landscapes with M. Van Elten's "Heath-Field in Holland,"
or Henrietta Ronner's "The Last Hope" — both of which we engrave on steel —
two of the best pictures in the Department of the Netherlands, and the reader
will feel that we have no occasion to fear the comparison. The painting by
Henrietta Ronner, "The Last Hope," we have named as a masterpiece of land-
scape art, although It would more properly be classed as an animal-painting.
The open country in which the hare is chased by the setter-dog is fragrant of
autumn stubble; the pathway-plank over the brook, towards which "poor puss"
is hurrying on in hope of escape. Is the primitive. Insecure "make-shift" with
which all country frequenters are familiar; the choice of the dog (not the
English greyhound, which would have made the chase a dead certainty, but a
thoroughbred setter, who really has no business chasing a hare at all, his j^roper
mission. If carefully trained, being to "point" or "set," not to chase, a hare)
shows that the artist Intended that the "Hope" should be hope In reality, for
the hare's chance of escape from a setter, every sportsman knows, Is not a
forlorn one. We have seen a visitor, on entering the Netherlands Department
of the Art-Annex during the hot days of July, when few visitors were there,
place his hands on his knees and stoop to await the result, so Interesting and close
looks the struggle between dog and hare. This picture Is in every way a success.
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In the Park.
2S2 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
"Heath-Field in Holland," by R. Van Elten, is one of those quiet nooks
common in Europe — the streamlet issuing from a clump of scrubby trees,
among which stands a stout and shady giant with gnarled trunk, whose leafy
shadow over the pool where the stream emerges into the open is suggestive
of trout and pike ; the rich carpet of heath, variegated with wild flowers, and
the cool gray atmosphere and cloudy sky account for the sleepy shepherd and
his dog, and quiet sheep wending their way aimlessly on the distant horizon.
Turning to the right hand in the Netherlands Art Gallery from Henrietta
Ronner's "Last Hope," the picture which strikes the beholder most prominently
is Gempt's illustration of La Fontaine's fable, "The Cat Feigning Death," of
which we have made a steel engraving. An immense gray and white tabby
(the white of the cat being exceedingly clean, and the gray correspondingly
fresh) is suspended by the hind legs, according to the well-known fable, and
the rats, who have become so cunning as to be next to impossible to catch,
being cautiously satisfied that the cat is really dead, proceed to discuss traps
and cats and other enemies to their peace in a free and unreserved manner.
A steel spring-trap to the left has been sprung and nearly caught one of the
larsjest rats ; indeed it has caught and abridged his tail close to the root. This
must have been some hours ago, for he has by this time regained his compo-
sure and returns with the rest, and the picture catches him in the act of
examining, in a thoughtful mood, the appendage which formerly helped him to
steer his way in the world. Two old fellows, in order to "make assurance
doubly sure," are on their hind legs, stretched up to see whether the cat be
really dead, and a white old mother-rat with a family of six is learnedly
warning her brood of the traps and pitfalls and cat wiles which endanger the
youthful prime of inexperienced rathood. An old-fashioned rat-trap appears on
the right, which two dark gray fellows are engaged in inspecting in a curious
and contemptuous manner. The cat sees and hears all this — as the cat is alive
and looks painted alive, for there never was such a healthy skin on a dead
cat. The light and shadow of the cellar in which the scene is appropriately
cast are admirably rendered, and we observe that the picture is sold, which
shows that it has found an appreciative admirer who meant business.
A most important picture is the finished steel engraving of the "Portrait
of Sir Joshua Reynolds," from a painting by himself. This painting is one
T. MOTLiU.XH^
THE CAT 1FEI©1^«?G BEATH..
'FT. S.IirteTTL3tLcaialExMlrltL0Til376,
SEBBIE & BARBIE .
FINE ART. 253
of the few pictures in tlie north-west gallery, where most of the British
loan pictures are grouped, that justifies the repute in which the artist was
held. This is a thoroughly satisfactory example of a good style of painting.
There is a simplicity, an absence of anything approaching trickiness, and
a manly vigor in the modeling of this head, that is in marked contrast to
the work of Sir Thomas Lawrence, who is represented by two pictures — a
portrait of the late Lord Ashburton, and a large canvas containing the portraits
of the three first partners of the house of Baring. This last named is the
best picture of Lawrence's, but there is no such workmanship upon it as we
find in the portrait of Reynolds, which might with great propriety have been
catalogued "The Portrait of a Gentleman," for any one who knows anything
of the history of the Fine Arts need not be informed what a model gentleman
he was. Is not his life familiar to all readers ? — as the friend and companion
of Sheridan, of Burke, of Goldsmith, of Johnson, of Garrick, of the Kembles,
and of Mrs. Siddons, whom he painted as the Muse of Tragedy. Sir Joshua
Reynolds has been callerl by his countrymen "the great founder of the British
School of painters," and he was undoubtedly one of the greatest painters that
ever lived. The British Government did itselt o-reat credit and did us hieh
honor in sending the portrait of their first President of the Royal Academy,
painted by his own hand, to grace our Centennial Exhibition. Indeed, we
consider this the most important picture of the foreign exhibits, and "the British
nation," whose property it is, paid us a graceful compliment in sending it.
As Reynolds was foremost among portrait-painters in England, Turner in
marines. Constable in landscape, so was George Lance in "still lite." Emerging
from the room in which hung the portrait of Reynolds, on the left-hand side
hung the example illustrated on pages 210 and 211, entitled, in the English
Catalogue, "The Unwelcome Guest," but the picture is known in England as
"Harold," the name of the pet peacock, we presume.
Lance was born in 1802, and died in 1864. While a youth he was a pupil
of Haydon. His peculiar talent for the representation of objects of "still life"
was first practically noticed by Sir George Beaumont, who purchased his pic-
tures. After this he soon had patrons in plenty. Though the labor bestowed
on these paintings was very great, four hundred of them remain to testify to
his industry and application. They are found in the best galleries of modern
roll.
tlryz^o^ Ujrdy, Pi
256 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
art, and have a high commercial as well as artistic value. In his peculiar style
Lance rivals the best of the Flemish masters, exhibiting equal brilliancy of color
and minuteness and delicacy of touch.
It is told of Mr. Lance that he became a fruit-painter by accident. He
was busy with a picture from history, in which it was necessary to introduce
chalices and grapes — the glories of the hot-house and the goldsmith's shop.
Like a sensible artist, he made careful studies of every portion of his intended
picture. His men and women, it is said, promised well, but his metal-work and
fruit more than realized the e.xpectadons of his warmest friends. He trans-
ferred Benvenuto Cellini and Covent Garden to canvas in a way that delighted
Jews, antiquaries and fruit-sellers. Critics and connoisseurs foretold in Mr.
Lance an English Van Huysum or Van Os, and in this instance their prophe-
cies have been fulfilled.
The works in the British section, of which mention has been made already
several times in the course of diis publicadon — either because of their import-
ance as marking the progress of British art, or as possessing characteristic
merits of their own — form but a small proportion of the entire collection, and
are far from representing all the pictures that are worthy the attendon of the
visitor. We must therefore content ourselves with a selection of what we
consider representative examples, one of which, "The Disputed Toll," we illus-
trate on pages 254 and 255. Mr. Hardy has given us here a rich piece of
humor. A wandering showman with a huge elephant are disputed passage at
a turnpike-gate, where the smock-frocked keeper, ready enough to fix the toll
of a wagon of hay, or the squire's gig, is evidently nonplussed as to the
price which so unusual a traveler should pay for his right of way. He has
probably consulted his voluminous tariff, which ranges from a herd of bullocks
to a drove of pigs, but from which the genus elephant is only conspicuous by
its absence. The worthy keeper then determines to be on the safe side, to do
his duty to his employers, and demands a good round sum. This the showman
does not feel inclined to pay, and a wordy war is going on between the two
disputants, while the elephant is apparendy inclined to put an end to the dis-
cussion by lifting the gate off its hinges, and thus setding the quesdon. A
diminutive terrier belonging to the gate-keeper is evidendy doing his best, as
far as barking goes, to aid his master. The sketch, we believe, is taken from
SIR .JOSH FA REYWOXiBSo
iional Eichibition.187 6
Renato /'eduzzi. Sculp.
Berenice.
258 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
an actual incident, tlie sliowman in question making it a practice to dispute the
toll demanded, at every turnpike-gate. After some discussion he would walk
on, and the elephant in endeavoring to follow him, would so batter and strain
the gate that the keeper would be ultimately only too glad to let the animal
pass at any price. The situation Mr. Hardy has portrayed in the picture before
us is eminently comical, and the whole subject is humorously and artistically
treated throughout, the elephant especially being an admirable piece of
portraiture.
Italian art is fond of delineating the subject of "Charity;" Del Sarto's
illustration of it, depicting a lovely woman nourishing a group of children, is
admired by every visitor to the Louvre. Signer Trombetta has contrived to
represent the same idea with birds, instead of children, as the subjects of
benevolence. We give an engraving of "The Bird's Nest," by this artist, on
page 199. No reliever of human wants could have a lovelier expression, or
show a mood of heavenlier tenderness, than this maiden who feeds from a quill
a nest of young and helpless fledgelings. When womanhood's whole soul goes
out, as here, in an effusion of love for objects other than self, the most finished
graces of our imperfect nature are realized, and human beauty takes its fairest
and completest expression. This Italian maid who leans against a pedestal, and
warms the little flock against her pure breast — gatlierlng In one embrace the
cross that hangs upon her bosom and the downy group of the birds — Is actu-
ated by the same feeling, and expresses the same grace, as the benefactress
of star\ang multitudes. For the purposes of art, the type is Identical. The
sculptor therefore has used all his power to give tenderness to the attitude,
and the brooding patience of a nursing mother to this maiden still in the bud.
It Is the nature of woman to nourish and to give life ; and these helpless nest-
lings are unwittingly setting In motion a current of nobler feelings, of more
developed intelligence, than they could ever have aroused In the mere bird
who was tlieir real parent. The beaut)' of the statue is in Its perfect repre-
sentation of the female instinct; whether the objects be winged or wingless it
matters little. The exquisite outgoing of woman's soul in care for another Is
all there, and the easy grace of the head, the skillful gathering and fall of the
drapery, and the poise of arrested motion in the hovering hand that confers
the nourishment, are but subordinate attractions. It is a somewhat hackneyed
26o THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
subject treated with an essential truth and understanding that gives it as much
emphasis as originaHty or audacity of treatment would have done.
The gay costume and solid comeliness of the Alsatian peasantry have long
proved an attraction to painters, and the picture whose copy we insert on
pages 222-3 exhibits agreeably the character as well as the effects of color
visible in a group of those half-French, half-German borderers. The types are
well chosen, the composition is admirable, and the coloring is rich and grave,
in M. Pabst's painting entitled "A Bride in Alsace." We see an old-fashioned,
heavily-timbered room, furnished with the painted wardrobe, the ponderous
linen-chest, and the rude bench of a German cottage, all of which have a kind
of sincere and honest beauty beyond the imitative starkness of "Eastlake
furniture." A bride is being ushered in by her mother to her group of bride-
maidens, the oldest of whom is about to fit upon the proper finger the marriage
ring. The intending bride is a simple-looking and comely blonde, who regards
her ring-finger with a calm and dispassionate air, as if the ring and its implied
pledge were the responsibility of some one else. She is gaily and tastefully
dressed ; about her thick waist is tied an embroidered apron ; her frock is
bordered with velvet, and a breast-knot of fresh flowers rises and falls with
the heaving of a bosom that no hysterical emotions excite and no morbid
apprehensions depress. Her little brother comes in at the door with another
nosegay, while a still larger bouquet reposes on the bench at the side of the
youngest bride-maid. The house, all around this quiet group and peaceful
essay of the ring, is of course in uproar; one fancies the noisy arrival of the
groom and his young men at the portal, the assemblage of the neighbors, the
marshaling in array for the church procession. "Nodding their heads before
them goes the merry minstrelsy." Curious relatives are peeping in at the door
upon the phlegmatic and hesitating bride. And even in the quiet room, the
sacred maiden's chamber which no hint of connubial confusion has heretofore
invaded, we see, beside the bride and her little group, a busy nymph who
rummages in a coffer for the wedding-scarf, and a damsel who dispenses cake
and wine. The women all have the peculiar head-dress which is the easy
distinoruishine-mark of Alsace, a largfe bow of black ribbon, like a monstrous
butterfly, perched on the top of the head ; the bride's alone is colored, the rest
sombre as Hamlet's cap. M. Pabst's workmanship is peculiarly firm and broad,
lie
a
<
m
1 1
FINE ART. 261
and has a special harmony with the buxom, well-nourished and vigorous style
of comeliness he represents.
What is this burst of brilliancy, this seeming flight of all the world along
the Champs Elysecs, this explosion of flowers across the pavement, and sudden
spotting over earth and heaven of glistening foliage, pink babies, and Easter
bonnets? It is the "Flower-Market in front of the Madeleine," aftd the par-
ticular florist who evokes ail the bloom is Edmund Morin. The exuberance of
spring and the brilliancy of a volatile population could hardly be more cleverly
hinted. Not a figure is complete, not a single object is in rigidly perfect
drawing; but there is a purpose in every blunder of the artist's, and his loosest
work is done where just the typical feature of the object is to be made
emphatic and exaggerated. These extravagant curves are the italic lines with
which the artist gets his energy. Here is indeed the glancing, quick effect of
the market held in front of the steps of the Madeleine Church in Paris. The
liveliest climax of the mart — the moment when the latest housekeeper is going
home with her gilliflowers, and the earliest lorette is galloping out for her white
camellias — the time when the sunshine is intensifying, the flowers are bursting
open, the children are chattering, and the blooded horses are trotting towards
the "Bois," — is recorded in M. Morin's glittering picture. The original work,
be it understood, is a large oil-painting, that hung in one of the long corridors
of Memorial Hall ; but it was put on wood for our cut by the painter himself
(see pages 234-5), '^vho is a constant worker for the better class of illustrated
periodicals in Paris. Here is the quick walk of the workman, pipe in mouth
and Jiotte on back ; here is the exaggerated high-stepping of the boulevard
horse, the high chin of the flunkey, the theatrical and overdone matronliness
of the "bonne femme" who sells the roses, the modish elegance of the French
lady, the hooked moustache of the French beau. How much is expressed by
this touch-and-go hastiness of drawing ! — what wonderful brilliancy tlie draughts-
man secures by a splash and a dot! When we think of it, a spectator really
could get no better or more distinct view of a changing crowd — a picture
photographically and minutely finished would really be false to the impression
created. "I feel as if it was beaudful fireworks being let off in my head," says
Mrs. Lirriper of Paris in eeneral. And M. Morin succeeds in conveviuQ- this
peculiar sensation, not the least characteristic of those which Paris creates. The
264 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
style of work is suggestive and very skillful. As the reader observes it, how-
ever, he will be very likely to ask himself if the same art-secret is not embodied
in work he has often seen before. These spots and surprises of printer's ink —
these crisp high lights and deeply underlined shadows — he has watched as long
as he has watched the pages of the London Illustrated News, and other publi-
cations embellished by the talent of John Gilbert. The style is a modification
of Gilbert's style, and the secret of M. Morin's peculiar brilliancy is, that he was
a pupil of Gilbert.
II Cavalier Ugo Zannoni, of Milan, is the author of the group of three
individuals, two animals and one human, engraved by us on page 239 — subject,
"You're Jealous," or "Affection and Envy." It is a pretty litde maid, in a laced
nightgown, who seemingly is taking her kitten to bed, while the pet terrier, in
a -passion of jealousy, yelps around her bare feet. The child looks down gently
upon the discarded courtier, but like a royal patron, keeps fast hold of the
reigning favorite while smiling tenderly upon the parasite she rejects. Evidendy,
Fido's too sincere tongue is what lias oot him his dismissal. In nurseries as
in courts, it is the sleek, comfortable toady, that takes all the favors it can get,
basks in the warmest bosom it can find, and says nodiing, that the caresses go
to; burly Fidelity, barking and snapping for pleasure at every salute, is too
noisy for a bedfellow. The cat, in the picture, does not exhibit the least
triumph, or hate of its rejected rival ; and that is another attribute of the
finished courder; even to remind the Throne of a past satellite is an error.
Anne Boleyn might have lived longer, if she had been just so much more
kittenish than she was as, to resolve- never to mention Catherine's name.
We publish on page 237 an engraving of a landscape, "The Lake of
Piedilugo," by Federico Ashton, a Florentine artist. Few scenes convey a sen-
timent of such uninterrupted peace. A broad expanse of water, led off by a
succession of low banks to the horizon, reflects a sky of Italian blue, except
where, pierced by the arrows of saggitate leaves, and overhung by fantastic
trees, it is stirred by momentary ripples and shadowed by darker reflections.
A light scow floats on the lake, wherein a solitary fisherman stands to spread
his net. The mild, basking, grassy shores, the plume of green trees, and the
blue sky. crossed by sailing ranks of white cloud, make up the prospect. If
there is any one quality which more than all others contains the inner charm
FINE ART.
265
of Italian landscape, it is its idleness. Labor seems banished from that part
of the world. Those whose lot requires them to work, do so in a leisurely
and matter-of-course routine, like this still fisherman, whose scow brushes the
S^uipt.
Aronie.
slender stakes that mark the channel of the great lake, and for whom the
currents and the slow hours will bring- an unforced income. The Italian loves
an avocation whose secret, like the business of the fisher\', is merely watching
and waiting and catching. The condition of an effective net, like that of a
strong but languid soul, is mere receptivity. Let the forces of Nature do half
266 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
the work, and let man stand ready to hold what they will bring him ! That
appears to be the genius of Italian life, and the type of the net seems the
best mark of character for the populace which to-day covers the western shores
of America with ingenious fishers — a populace which has sometimes risen, as
with Masaniello, to momentary supremacy, but which ordinarily likes to be
strongly governed and regularly fed. Cheery pensioners of ever-bounteous
Nature, the Italian plebs are the product of their mild skies, their fruitful soil,
and their beautiful groves. For the work-day Saxon world, this temperament
seems half guilty, half enviable. We let our invalids and our idlers administer
to themselves a summer in Italy, like a dose of opiate. Our strong and active
producers despise the remedy. Yet let a bustling, busy Anglo-Saxon resolutely
dispose of his carking cares for a single season, and without the fatigue of
incessant sight-seeing drop into some quiet nest on the shores of old Latium,
and the fortitude of another and better and stiller kind of strength will gradu-
ally grow upon him ; the air of a calmer manhood will bathe his being, the
still waters of contentment will well up in his character, the blue peaks of
serener purposes will fortify the whole circle of his horizon, and Italy will be
justified.
By the same artist is the painting of "Woods in Autumn," or ''Bosco di
Faggi in Aulo7nno'' of which we present the engraving on page 259. Near
the centre of the scene, beneath a large beech-tree, a couple of herd-women
are resting, while in the distance, to the right, browse a dozen cows, too far off
to be plainly distinguished, but doubtless of that soft mouse-color which Ruskin
says makes the hides of Italian catde more beautiful than all the spotted and
painted glories of tropical animals. Over the heads of these peaceful ruminants
rises a range of snow-capped mountains. The greater part of the picture is
occupied by the spreading boughs of this Italian woodland, where in a warm
and spicy air the immemorial trees drop from season to season their brown,
dry plumage,
"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the glades
Of V.-ilIambrosa."
We have very little idea, though we hear so much about it, of the real character
of Italian foliage. A minute and consciendous study like the present picture is
FINE ART.
267
a valuable contribution to our information. The absence of any true winter in
Italy makes the foliage for the greater part of the year somewhat sere and
268 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
dingy ; the blackish green of the ilex and cypress distinguishes the streets,
gardens and cemeteries ; in summer this already sombre coloring is well pow-
dered with dust ; in the spring, the tender and exquisite green of the young
leaves is largely mixed with the faded hues ot the older leafage, which the
licrht frosts of winter have not been able to disturb. The ofreen of Italian
scenery is therefore much tempered with faded browns and dusty grays, yet
this very reserve of color makes effects more within the reach of art to portray,
and trains the painter to choose the subtler harmonies of his pallette. At
sunrise and sunset there are fine golden effects, powdering with sparkles of
yellow light this austere vegetation ; and no landscape-garden that we know
of can excel in impressiveness the Boboli Park on the Altrarno side of Florence,
when the long ranks of mighty melancholy patriarchs of the woods are washed
with rain and then stricken with the golden rod of some long sunset ray
emerging from the storm. The painter of this autumn woodland has allowed
his memory and fancy to become thoroughly penetrated with the peculiar
character of the leafaee of North Itah' — the region round about Florence — and
we may refer to his work for a reliable image of the very aspect of nature
that was in Milton's mind when, old and blind in England, he let his thoughts
recur to that youthful visit to Galileo on the height overlooking Florence, and
that immortal comparison of the defeated host to the fallen foliage of Vallam-
brosa woods.
One of Shakespeare's loveliest creations, "Imogen," is perhaps less adapted
for delineation on the stage than by the painter's art. Miss Louisa Starr, a
talented Englishwoman, was represented at the Centennial by a picture with
this subject, the painting having been lent for the purpose by the New York
connoisseur, Mr. H. C. Howells, whose property it was. (See cut on pages
262-3.) The plight of distressed damsels wandering about in boys' clothes was
a favorite one with Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan dramatists ; since
female parts were in their time always played by lads, there was something
appropriate and obvious in the situadon, and no doubt most original and piquant
effects were somedmes got by young actors of genius, whose fame is now lost
to us, in the equivocal predicament. This desolate lady, who out of the blan-
dishment of courts has wandered to the miserable shelter of a cave and the
feast of bare bread, is represented by Miss Starr with grace and sweetness.
FINE ART. 269
Her form is posed in an artistic attitude, and her drapery falls in a sculptural,
noble manner. By her side, in the rough cave, reposes the sword, the guardian
of honor and respect; but Imogen, folding her bare feet together as if each
sought the protection of the other, and broadening out that helpless woman's
lap which is one of the most womanly of the features of femininity, and always
seems adapted for bounty, while the narrow male loins seem intended for agility
in fight, will make but a poor figure in swordswomanship.
No picture in the Centennial Exhibition attracted a greater share of admi-
ration from the art-loving public than the "Pan and Bacchantes" of Eugene
Felix, represented on pages 270-271 of this work. Hung in the centre ot
the wall, immediately opposite the great painting of "Catherine Cornaro," and
displaying its nymph-like nudities in the full size of nature, the picture excited
a popular, and somewhat equivocal, enthusiasm. It is certainly an intricate,
painstaking, academic study. The attitude of the standing form reminds one
of an antique statue, and there is ingenuity in the way in which the line of the
lifted arm of the reposing figure carries out the curve commenced by the
trailing- thig^h and ankle of the other one. The theme is rather trivial lor so
large and highly finished a work. A terminal statue of the god of open-air
nature, Pan, is caressed by a pair of the feminine iollowers of Bacchus ; the
goat-like profile of the image, and the open-lipped laughter of its mouth, lend
themselves easily enough to the fancy of the applied cup and offered grape-
branch. One laughing Bacchante reaches up and sets the goblet to the lips
of Pan, steadying herself meanwhile by throwing her arm lightly around his
shoulder. The other, who has sunk upon the ground at the base, lifts up the
grape-branch, while a goat capers over the overturned amphora, and a blos-
soming oleander-tree springs from the urn behind the head of the reclining
nymph. The calculated suavity of the combined forms of this group is offset
by the pointed and bristling shapes of the foliage all around, and the flesh of
the figures relieves itself against darkly-shadowed leafage and the bronze ot
the idol. Let us judge such a picture not by any exclusive standard applied
to its subject, but solely on its merits as a decoration. It is simply an academic
copy of the nude, promoted into a picture by the addition of the trees and
other accessories. As such it does not exactly satisfy any standard of criticism.
The forms of the Bacchantes are conventional. They are studies ot the living
■V <^'i/*v<-o'r»^ •X'----' v-3.
#.v -^i<. :^', ' ■ - --^^'At
2/2 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
female model mended out by reminiscences of Raphael and the antique ; but
they add nothing to the trophies bequeathed to art by the old masters — they
are not only far beneath the style of Raphael and the Venetians, but they are
below the eclectics and the satellites of those old painters, below the Carracchi
and the Albanos of a time of decline. The accumulation of pictures of just
about this degree of merit is a bane of art — they have no reason for exist-
ence. The nature-study is not first-rate nature-study, and the objections of the
rigid and selt-denying ascetic cannot be met by the plea of that close and
instructive discernment of the beauties of nature which in some works of eenius
is of the nature of a higrher revelation, and carries with it its own morale and
o
line of duty. We would assign a decidedly secondary place to the "Pan and
Bacchantes." Yet, to reach even that secondary place in the achievements of
art, how much study has had to be undergone! — how much patience exer-
cised ! — how much the hand has had to be limbered and the eye trained ! Art
has had to culminate with the Greeks, rise again with the Italian painters, and
be painfully reconstructed by modern experiment, before the common attain-
ment of the cratt and the every-day trick of trade could give us a conventional
success like this. The most elegant and noble Egyptian sculptor, carving a
goddess tor a queen, coidd not have invented one of these poses ; the cunningest
Phoenician workman of Solomon's, the ablest Etruscan carver, could not have
reached that commonplace grace which stamps these nymphs, and is by this
time the easy attainment of every drawing-school. But there is a responsibility
which goes with an age of intelligence. In painting as in literature, it is not
permissible to trade on the discoveries of our predecessors. It is not permissible
for a newspaper poet to rise into fame by writing a few songs which have the
smoothness of the smoother songs of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher:
that smoothness was with them the result of an immense strain of the ear, a
profound research into the mysteries of a language in a state of formation.
There is no glory in writing smoothly now, when smooth periods are ready-
made to everybody's tongue. In art, there is no glory in making conventional
beauty; without there is something of real piercing insight in our copies from
nature, they had better not be published. Unless the painter can get at some
seldom-observed and essential characteristic of his model — something that strikes
the trained critic as he is struck by some sudden touch, straight from the heart
FINE ART.
273
to the heart, in a drama — there is nothing gained, the world does not become
the richer by the contribution. But let him once express, with insight and
Felix Martin, Sculp.
Louis XI at Peroitne.
authority, a subtle natural fact; let him indicate the pearly reflection and blood-
fed quality of human flesh in light or shadow; let him remind us of the value
274 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
of natural lights and darks in objects seen against the sky; let him touch us
with the reminiscence of his own personal discoveries in the aspects of nature,
and we recognize him immediately, and forgive a deal of puerility or haste.
It is the academic, official painters who are hard to forgive — those who are to
pictorial what a calculating, uninspired author is to literary art — the Bulwers of
the brush. As for the present painter, he has committed one sin that academic
art loves dearly and repeats forever: his figures are illuminated by studio light,
and not by that of the open air in which they are placed. The gradations on
their limbs and bodies are the gradations observed in a room with a window.
Around these forms, thus shaded, a landscape is coldly and heartlessly painted
in. The human beings receive no lights, no reflected colors, from the accesso-
ries ; and the illumination upon them is the tempered illumination of interiors,
not the bold square impinging of external daylight.
There are two painters of the name of Daubigny whose reputations are
well known to American picture-buyers. The father, Charles, who possesses a
truly remarkable talent for representing the placid river-scenery of France, was
not represented by any contribution at the Centennial festival; the son, who
distinctively signs his name Karl, and who belongs to the class of rising and
ambitious artists, contributed, inter alia, the landscape entitled "Shipping Oysters
at Cancale." We are enabled to give, on page 267, a memorandum of this
picture that has a higher interest than vould belong to the smoothest engraving
we could furnish: it is a fac-simile of the artist's own pen-and-ink sketch for
the picture; his signature will be observed in the right-hand corner. A weather-
stained old oyster-boat, in M. Daubigny's painting, was seen stranded on the
beach at low tide, and a whole population of oyster-gatherers, consisting of
robust girls and women with warm stuff dresses and white caps, were distributed
in every conceivable attitude and order of grouping, engaged in the business
of loading in the shell-fish. Even in the hasty indication given by our sketch,
the life of the postures, as the hard-working fish-wives carr\' between them the
heavy baskets, leaning forward as they advance with them from the water's
edge, or clineine toeether, half entangled with their wet skirts, is obvious
enough ; but the truth of sky and water, in front of which these clever figures
were set, is left to our reader's imagination — or, if he saw the picture, to his
memory. M. Daubigny Jils, educated in the soundest traditions of art, and
FINE ART.
275
Albert Maii^nan, Pinx.
The Sentinel.
2/6 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
already able to boast of some legitimate successes, has, we feel sure, a bright
future before him. His contributions of a "Landscape" (No. 135 at the Cen-
tennial) and "The Valley of Pourville in Normandy" (No. 175) added to the
favorable impression made by the more important work which we select.
The life-size statue of Berenice, by Renato Peduzzi, of Milan, was one of
the finest examples of imitative technic that the whole Italian exhibit afforded.
We give an illustration on page 257. The spectator in this case is not to look
for a severe ideal, nor for a close historical treatment. Sis^nor Peduzzi concerns
himself but little with the date and place, the probable appearance of this
Macedonian heroine transplanted into Egypt. Like a true decorative artist, he
makes it his unique concern to represent in stone that glitter of sunny hair
which was feigned to have become a constellation. Everything in the compo-
sition is subordinated to this most difficult of textures, and if the hard marble
does not suggest the lightness, the crispness, the fleecy sheen of that divine
chevehcre, his work of daring, the challenge of his chisel, has come to naught.
We think the oraae has not been thrown in vain. Of all the Italian statues,
which represented by many different devices the gossamer grace and separable
quality of curling hair, his masterpiece is the boldest. Piled in sunlit rings
upon the lightly-poised head, flowing like a rivulet down the back, and lying
in straying heaps upon the uplifted arms, the hair of Berenice, in his statue,
becomes a sort of marble constellation. In flossy lightness, in capricious flow
from the roots to the extremities, in supfsestion of cjolden color, the locks of
this singular statue are a wonder. Never has chisel more haughtily insulted
the marble: under its touches the inert stone loses its weight and massiveness,
and is trained to gambol, to fly, to scatter, and tangle itself like silk. The
ancients never attempted any such painting treatment in marble : preferring to
respect the limitations of the material they worked in ; they were content to
treat the hair of their stone statues in a distandy suggestive manner; when
they wrought in bronze they made a different line of attempts, and freely used
wires or the most vigorous undercutting to imitate the separate strands of the
locks. Signor Peduzzi has not only adapted the painting method to the hair,
but to the draper)'; the finely-striped folds of the latter, its clinging softness,
and the drooping draggle of its fringes, are singular and refined ; delicate as
the painted draperies of Hebert or Cabanel. The subject of this statue was
FINE ART.
277
a real personage, who died 221 B. C. She was one of those descendants of
the Macedonian conquerors of Egypt who introduced Greek customs and Greek
civilization into the land of the Pharaohs, and the sculptor represents her in
her grand historic act of piety, worshiping a Greek divinity. In the fane of
Angela Rtunagnoli, Ptn.
Meditation.
Aphrodite, while Evergetes, at once her brother and her husband, was starting
on a dangerous expedition, she vowed all her hair to the goddess in case he
returned, and emerged shorn from the temple. He came back in due time
victorious, and soon after the queen's hair disappeared from the altar; upon
this the report of a special miracle was raised, and a complaisant priest, one
278 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Conon, was found to declare that the locks had been seized by Jupiter and
turned into a constellation. In this form we see even now the begemmed hair
of Berenice, as when the multitudes of Alexandria first worshipped it on the
announcement of the prodigy. Poor Berenice, while the humble crowd were
still paying divine honors to this part of her person, could not save herself
from the horrible pain of a violent death : she was assassinated by her own
son. The statue which represents her in her flush of youth and in her moment
of dedication and ardent piety, was the most important work exhibited by the
sculptor; his other contributions were of ornamental garden-statuary, distinguished
by singular brilUancy and skill in the cutting, but hopelessly baroques.
The statue of Aronte, by Guarnerio, is connected by its subject with that
supposed settlement of Italy by ^neas, which is still a favorite legend with the
modern Italians, as it was with Augustus, for whom Virgil put the story into
shape. We present a cut of the figure on page 265. Among the opponents
of ^neas on the soil of his adoption were the king of the Rutuli, Turnus, and
Camilla, the beautiful queen of the Volsci. This lovely Amazon, who could run
over the sea without wetting her feet, and "fly o'er th' unbending corn," dis-
tinguished herself in the war of her ally, Turnus, against ^neas, by the numbers
who fell under her hand. Aronte, one of Eneas' soldiers, killed the dangerous
beauty with his arrow, and perhaps decided the triumph of civilization in Italy.
Guarnerio, the most versatile of the Italian artists, has handled this classic theme
like a true disciple of Canova. The statue is in the purest classic taste. We
do not recognize in its treatment the gusty energy of the same artist's
"Washington," nor the epigrammatic relish of his "Forced Prayer." We have
before pointed out this singular versatility of a single chisel, which opens out
strange views of the purpose and end of art. Is the artist to be a being of
some consistency and some convictions, or is he to change his style radically
like an actor, and wear with equal readiness the robe of the buffo or the
tragedian ?
Recurring to the department of English paintings, we illustrate on page
285, the only contribution sent by a rising London artist, Mr. Laslet John Pott.
This painter, who has not yet received Academic honors, seems destined to a
high place in his country's art-roll, from the ability with which he arranges his
groups, the propriety of action and expression in his individual figures, and the
28o THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
care with which he confers the historic imprint of a scene. Mr. Pott's contri-
bution at Philadelphia, represented "Charles I leaving Westminster Hall after
his Trial." There is nothing in English history which lends itself so favorably,
not only to the patriotic choice of the Britons themselves but to the selection
of foreign painters, as the episode of Charles' history ; not only has Vandyke
left us his portraits of matchless and melancholy grace, but Delaroche has
painted "Charles I Insulted in the Guard-Room," and "Cromwell Viewing the
Body of Charles I." The present painting shows Charles marching with resigned
and princely step out of the Hall where his final condemnation has been pronounced.
Three times did the self-appointed judges of the Stuart prince require his presence
before them ; and each time the approaches and outward chambers of the Hall
of Parliament were carefully filled with a rabble, admitted for the express purpose
of harassing him. In going through the Hall the soldiers were instigated to cry
out, "Justice and Execution !" Every indignity of tongue and gesture was visited
upon the royal victim, and it is recorded that a wretch having spit in his face,
Charles patiently remarked, "Poor souls, they would treat their generals in the
same manner for sixpence." The martyr-king walks, guarded by a few Parlia-
mentary soldiers, who, however, are evidently in sympathy, not with their charge,
but with his accusers and insulters. In the foreground, a lusty smith, with the
pincers still in his blackened hand, has left his work to persecute his monarch
with the coarsest jests of the smithy. The picture tells its story well, and arouses
a lively sympathy for the elegant and patient victim. Unfortunately, the reverse
of the medal is less adapted to artistic purposes, and we have few pictures
representing the wrongs and tyrannies that goaded an overwrought people to
revolution. Mr. L. J. Pott, the painter, was born in 1837, ^^ Newark, a pretty
town of Nottinghamshire. At the age of sixteen, he was articled to a provincial
architect, where he laid the foundation for that excellent arrangement of archi-
tectural backgrounds which now distinguishes many of his compositions. Tiring
of the bonds of apprenticeship, he persuaded his friends to let him study
painting, in London, and presently entered the art-school of Mr. Corey. He
next became a pupil of Mr. Alexander Johnstone. His first Academy picture
was one of "Efifie Deans." With many more years of work probably before
him, with good judgment and sound methods, Mr. Pott, doubtless, is destined to
an honorable career in his chosen vocation.
FINE ART.
281
Equally true in historic sentiment, though not otherwise allied to the work
last cited, is the portrait-statue of Louis XI, by Felix Martin, which attracted
considerable attention in the French Department of the Art-Annex. Here is,
Ambrozw Borghi, Sc.
The Mother s Treasure.
indeed, the deep, subtle, treacherous soul of Louis XI, done into imperishable
bronze — the same monarch, whom we have shown in Comte's picture, amusing
his sickness with dancing pigs. Here is the wily, calculating intriguer, whose
weak credulity worshipped the leaden amulets fastened upon his hat, and whose
282 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
strong will broke the power of his nobles, sending Charles the Bold to his
bloody grave, at Nancy, and reserving for France only two recognized powers,
the King and the People. M. Martin has perfectly caught the feeble attitude
of the valetudinarian, the lean legs embracing each other as they cross, the
droop of the figure that hugs itself in its own selfishness. The grand plans
coursing through the sick man's brain — the energy and patriotism that changed
a group of warring provinces into a grand and united France — could hardly
be told in a work of parlor statuary. Louis XI is one of the most strongly-
marked characters in history. He presents just that mixture of foible and
strength, of eccentricity and strongly-held purpose, which furnish the light and
shade necessary for an artistic presentment. He has accordingly been the
subject of various works in romance, the drama and the fine arts. M. Martin
represents him gathered up in a huge Gothic chair, his left foot resting on a
cushion, and the other dangling as it is thrown over the opposite knee. His
head is settled deeply into the ermine of his robe, and rests upon his right
hand, the other being stretched quite across to grasp the opposite arm of the
chair; this unconventional posture Is full of character and originality. The
conception and finish of this small figure, are alike manly, vigorous and artistic.
We engrave this figure on page 273.
The beautiful girlish head of which we present an engraving on page 277,
was painted by Angelo Romagnoli, a Florentine artist. A dark-eyed maiden is
leaning back in a chair of antique shape, and looking vaguely into space, while
a large rose is held in the hand, as if just plucked and lifted for the purpose
of inhalling Its fragrance. This patrician girl might be Juliet, debating the
Import of family names, and deciding that
"that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
The elegant creature represented by Signor Romagnoli, is dressed in silk, with
ruffs of gauze at the wrist and neck ; the costume is one of those to which it is
hard to assign a date, being a mode of some antiquity or a modern one imitating,
as modern ones so capriciously do, the graces and ornaments of a bygone time.
The marble group called "The Mother's Treasure," by Ambrozio Borghi,
of Milan, was placed In that central axis of the Art-Annex, so crowded with
statues, which immediately caught the visitor's eye from the door of entrance, by
il[] mMkmiiiJLji
284 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
its lono- vista of snow-white forms. We o;ive an encjravincj of Sig^nor Boro^hi's
composition on page 281. It is a fashionable lady whom the artist represents
as yielding to the universal instinct of maternity. Half-undressed, in peignoir
and pantoiLfles, with hair in a mixed state, combined of fashionable scrambling
and midnight " coming down," the young mother poises, light as a bird, on the
cradle's edge, and lifts the little nude boy-baby for a kiss. The abandon with
which she sits on the rocking crib of her infant, is childlike and pretty ; the
child's pose, straining up lor the kiss, has a bold directness. The pair of figures,
too strongly marked with the superficial graces of "boudoir art" to be much
better than the plates in a "Book of Beauty," are redeemed from absolute
commonplace by that sentiment of mother's love, which, common as humanity,
is never vulgar.
Let the reader contrast this with another treatment of the same subject,
by a Belgian artist of a higher distinction than Signor Borghi can lay claim to.
Charles Auguste Fraikin, of Brussels, is a sculptor of settled reputation ; casts
of his beautiful child-subjects have been favorite models for the young artists
of the Pennsylvania Academy for nearly a score of years ; and he sent to the
Centennial Exposition a pair of subjects in marble, one of which we engrave on
page 249. This, like Signor Borghi's group, delineates a young mother looking at
her first-born with the ineffable thrill of perfect love. But it is rustically simple
and chaste in design, whereas the Italian work iVitters itself away in a host of
fluttering ornaments, that conflict with the central idea. We do not mean to
maintain for an instant, that rustic mothers love their children better than society
mothers do. Of all the affected nonsense that is talked in this age of many
affectations, the most unloyal and shameful, is perhaps that which perpetually
goes beyond the bounds of our own class, to find a purity of love and height
of feeling which do not exist, it is pretended, within it. The assumption is in
fact a very cheap dramatic trick: the assertor wants to secure the glow of
contrast by representing ideal scenes outside the limits of his own and his hearers'
experience. A little reflection will convince the average reader that city parents —
society parents — constandy make sacrifices, and reveal heroism, in favor of their
children, that to the boorish rustic, governing by repression and exacting hard
duty, is unknown. It is not, then, because a country mother is represented,
that M. Fraikin's group is severe and candid ; but it has an elevated simplicity
FINE ART.
285
of its own that lifts it quite outside of social spheres and class distribution it
belongs to maternity pure and simple, the maternity that puts forward its claim
to make sacrifices and undergo care alike in the primitive aoes of the world
a.
and now. The Belgian artist shows us, in Belgian close coif and coil of blonde
plaits, a smiling peasant-mother regarding her offspring. The child almost nude,
excepting the external cap, which, on die Continent, seems to be the one fixed
286 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
fact of infantine existence, and never comes off. Tlie mother, too, lias been
undressing; certain unsheathings and irregularities of her costume — irregularities
in an evidently modest woman — have the effect, not of loose suggestiveness, but
of defining, marking, and laying stress on a supposed condition of absolute privacy.
Supported on one bare knee, the youthful mother holds her babe, and gazes
direcriy into its face ; and the Httle one, no longer hungry, or sleepy, or tired,
returns the look with that intelligence which mothers always find so extreme and
precocious. That is the whole composition ; but the details and general taste
of the group are of a kind that give it a high rank among works of genre
sculpture. The curve of the woman's neck, the poise of her head, are perfect
o-race ; the harmony of the lines into which the limbs are thrown, tending here
and there to a seemly and monumental perpendicular, satisfies and rests the eye.
There is not only the complete absence of meretricious trickery ; there is the
presence of beauties that charm by their delicacy and give lasting satisfaction by
their sterling sweetness. The figure of the mother is pure, large and sculptural,
with something of the free and careless animalism of a primitive nymph. The
babe has somewhat of that piquant, whimsical charm which distinguished the
artist's other contribution, the "Drone-Bee."
Peasant life in its comedy-aspect is illustrated by the Diisseldorf painting,
whose copy we give on page 250. " In the Park" is the tide of a picture by
F. Hiddemann, a gentleman of the "Diisseldorf School" and Diisseldorf
nativit)-. It is a striking picture, and may be called a favorite one ; since the
artist, after the custom of German studios, has executed more than one replica,
and gratified a circle of possessors instead of a single connoisseur. The theme
is an anecdote. A rusdc beau and his inamorata out for a holiday, have strayed
into the park of a grandee of their localit)\ Here, enwreathed with blossoming
roses, is a globular mirror, of the kind so often found in European gardens.
These convex looking-glasses distort the faces of beholders in a very ludicrous
manner, and the country gallant is laughing, between the whiffs of his pipe, at the
caricature presented as the reflection of his pretty companion. The gentle girl,
on the contrary, secure in a liberal endowment of village beauty, looks at the
grimacing image with placid calmness, secure in the knowledge that no distortion
can quite rob the red from her cheeks and the blue from her eyes.
A Brussels painter, Jean Verhas, contributed the "Sea-shore at Blankenberghe,"
FINE ART.
287
which we illustrate on page 283. Two children, a boy and a girl, watch a third,
a sturdy little workwoman, at her task of digging a trench in the sand. One
carries a flag, which will be planted on the fort, when completed : one has
introduced a hostile man-of-war, which would occupy a very menacing position
288 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
in front of the stronghold, but that it is laid over on its side, high and dry, in
a total deficiency of water. How many of us are taken by this pretty scene
back at once to childhood and innocence ! How many in days of infancy, have
"Built their castles of dissolving sand
To watch them overflowed, or following up
And chasing the white breakers, daily left
The little footprint daily washed away!"
The style of painting practiced by M. Verhas in this example was very clever:
it was broad in the extreme, with great spaces of sunny light and restricted
shadow. This distribution does not always make a picture luminous ; but M.
Verhas gave us a composition that seemed bathed in real sunshine.
"The End of the Game," by J. Beaufain Irving, is a painting that attracted
much notice in the large American room of Memorial Hall. We present an
excellent engraving of this subject. Seldom has pictorial art explained itself more
perspicuously than in this composition, where the eye takes in at a glance the
whole story and the miserable consequences that must follow. The chess-
board is set for a bout; liquors, which heat the blood, are discerned on the
chimney-piece and on the side-table ; it is the epoch of duels, as defined by
the dress characteristic of our grandfathers' day. The younger player has started
up from the game, and has challenged his adversary, on some accusation of
cheating or other ungentlemanly conduct ; his fine silken coat lies on the over-
turned chair, and he fights in his laced shirt-sleeves. This "stripping for action"
has not saved him at the hands of his older and cooler opponent, who has
stabbed him to the heart, upon which his hand is pressed, as if to restrain the
drops of life-blood, that come "like the first of a thunder-shower." He is caught
in the arms of an elderly spectator, possibly his father. At the other side of
the room, the cold and dangerous-looking winner of this ugly game glances
round, the traces of rage just passing from his face in a look of malignity,
tempered with watchful self-control. He lifts the darkened blade of his sword,
which he is just about to return to its scabbard, as his adviser — a cool hand who
thinks of the laws against dueling — points to the door and counsels him to fly the
neighborhood. In another moment, stepping over the rash boy's scabbard which
lies at his feet, he will stride from the room, and proceed to place a safe distance
between himself and the scene of combat. There are a couple of little poems
g
■^
>=1
^
290 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
by Browning, which perfectly convey the heat and the after-chill of a duel;
that entitled "Before" begins with the line
"Let them fight it out, friend! Things have gone too far."
The other, penetrated with the sentiment of a terrible and ineffaceable regret,
concludes :
"I would we were boys as of old.
In the field, by the fold —
His outrage — God's patience — marCs scorn
Were so easily borne P' '
Mr. Irving, who reads us this impressive lesson on so-called "Chivalry,"
has passed away from among men since the Exhibition, where his work was so
conspicuous. He was a Southerner by birth, but had lived in New York since
the war of the Rebellion. He excelled in a line of highly-finished, brilliantly-
costumed pictures, small in scale and illustrating heroic or chivalric life — coming
nearer in this kind of painting to the style of Meissonier or Zamacbis than
any American artist. His works sold very readily, at high prices ; some were
owned by Mr. August Belmont, of New York, who upon his decease organized
an exhibition of his own magnificent gallery for the benefit of the artist's
family. Among the items of this beneficiary display were several of Mr. Irving's
works, including his last, a crowded composition representing the curse-scene
from "Richelieu," the property of ex-governor Stamford of San Francisco.
Mr. Toby Rosenthal, an artist of San Francisco, contributed the painting
of "Elaine," which forms the subject of one of our steel plates. It is a noble
and tragic composition, but so distinctly a representative of the Munich school
of painting that it neither seems like a picture to be righdy called a work of
American art, nor an illustration of the legendary epoch of Great Britain. The
dead girl, with her blonde massiveness, her powerful frame and large jaws,
would do very well for a character from the Nibelungen Lied, but is less suit-
able for an illustration of British loveliness. She is depicted floating down the
river in the barge, rowed by the dumb serving-man, to be brought into the
presence of Sir Lancelot, whom she had loved without return. The legend
relates how, when dying, Elaine prepared her farewell missive to the knight,
while the thought lay all the while in her gentle breast that by means of a
tender stratagem she could deliver him her own love-letter in her own hand,
o
< ^
CO 1
FINE ART.
291
even after the breath had left her fair body. This hapless testamentary arrange-
ment is carefully described in the "Morte d'Arthur" of the fifteenth-century
writer, Mallory. He makes the maid say: "And while my body is hot, let this
L. £. EarrittSt Sculfi.
Spimiing-Girl of Megara.
letter be put in my right hand, and my hand bound fast with the letter until
that I be cold, and let me be put in a fair bed, with all the richest clothes that
I have about me, and so let my bed, and all my richest clothes, be laid with
292 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
me in a chariot unto the next place where Thames is, and there let me be put
within a barget, and but one man with me, such as ye trust to steer me
thither, and that my barget be covered with black samite over and over." The
dying wish of the fair maid of A'stolat was carried out, and she arrived with
her letter where the king and court and Lancelot were. "And there he saw
the fairest woman lie in a rich bed, covered unto her middle with many rich
clothes, and all was of cloth of gold, and she lay as though she had smiled."
A lovely story, worthy the most inspired effort of the painter. We are aware
of no interpretation of the scene which can compare with Mr. Rosenthal's.
With all its imperfection, as a conception of British legend, it is far superior
to M. Dore's, in his illustration of Tennyson's Idyl on the subject. The general
cast of the subject, the funereal-majesty of the black-draped barge, the solemn
mournfulness of the servitor, compose one ot the tew paintings which com-
pletely fill the conditions of the grand style, without a false note in any part.
The theme of our steel plate entitled "The Bather," after Perrault, is one
that might at first shock that most ticklish of human organs entitled "the cheek
of the young person." It is a tropic maid reclining after her bath in a hammock
that is slung across the stream ; her arms, thrown up over her head, make an
ivory cradle for one of the sweetest faces that ever entered a painter's dreams,
and her foot swings down so as just to graze the warm current. It is, in all
openness, a study of the nude. The subject would exclude M. Perrault's picture
from any English or American Academy-exhibition, but it and its similarly-
sinning rivals — the other "bathers" by Courbet and Gamier, the "Echo" of
Tortez, the "Salammbo" of Cetner, the "Venus" of Faivre-Duffer, the "Angelica"
of Chartrin, and the "Cassandra" we have already illustrated after Camorre —
were not amenable to rejection here since they had passed the criticism of
M. du Sommerard. The motive of young French painters in exhibiting nudities
is quite misunderstood. It is not from an immodest love of carrying out volup-
tuous thoughts that Alphonse and Anatole send their nude subjects to the
expositions ; for them, years of study have made the contemplation of the bare
form as business-like a matter as the physician's anatomy of the muscles. It
is simply because "flesh" is the most difficult thing to paint. A professor
always recommends the pupil in whom he feels a special interest — the pet of
the year — to try himself on a nude academic figure and see if they will admit
ffii
FINE ART.
293
it in the Salon. "Flesh" is the touch-stone of a painter's abilit)'. A figure
covered with drapery is comparatively easy. "Learn to paint flesh," Bonnat or
Duran or Cabanel or Couture will say to a pupil, "and all the mysteries of art
Enrico Braga, Sculpt,
II Saltambancio,
will be open to you. Paint flesh, with its beating carnation, its rich creamy
furrows and Rembrandt shadows, its gray Veronese high-lights, its unctuous
puffs of Rubens fulness, its chiseled firmness, its variety, sympathy and life.
294 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
The envelope in which our souls are encased is the masterpiece of the heavenly
sculptor on this earth. It follows and translates every mood of our minds.
When we love it flushes, when we hate it pales, when we prosper it softens,
when we are impoverished it grows dull. It is our index and demonstration.
It stands before our will like the dial before the clock, like the algebraist's
coefficient before his letters. It is the crucial test of the painter, and the
renown of the most famous masters is respectively ranged almost exactly
according as they succeded in representing It completely."
We have thought it right to give a representation of these two fine pieces
of flesh-painting from the Centennial — the "Cassandra" first, and now this figure
of Perrault's. There is no immodesty in the subject, as the painter of "The
Bather" conceives it. The nymph is placed in a hushed privacy, canopied with
leaves and their shadows, so secretly folded to the heart of the sylvan solitude
that no indiscreet sunbeam can steal to pry upon her. There are plenty of
immoral subjects among the works of famous painters, but this Is not an
immoral subject, for If a person may not bathe, all alone, in the heats of
summer, then righteousness must consist in dirt. Our task, however, is not so
much to vindicate the morals of the artists we illustrate, as to deal with their
strictly professional qualities. In this respect "The Bather" is certainly a merito-
rious work : of the many reclining figures we remember In art, few have the
restful sentiment of the posture more delicately Indicated. The supine languor
of the general frame, as It yields to the concavity and to the swing ot the
hammock, except where the protrusion of the dabbling foot pulls half the
yielding form towards a straight line. Is Imagined with the daintiest truth. This
expressive attitude Is set In a dark mysterj' of leaves and shaded water, like a
cameo In some dark and lustrous enamel. Musidora reclines in a happy day-
dream, as Innocent as her eyes, as untroubled as her white brow.
We would not even seem to forget the abundant and striking display made
by our native sculptors; and accordingly we dip, almost at random, into the
catalogue of American names, sure of alighting upon some work of merit that
has either satisfied the testy critics at home, or has managed to please the
capricious, fastidious tribe of traveled Yankees. We give three statues by
Americans who, living abroad, have won renown here. Mr. T. R. Gould, with
his contributions of "The West Wind," "The Rose," and "The Lily:" Mr. P. F.
FINE ART.
295
F Cogen, Pinx.
Fisherman s Wife of Zuyder Zee,
296 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Connelly, with his "Ophelia," his "Honor arresting the Triumph of Death," and
a large number of other conceptions; Mr. Randolph Rogers, with his "Nydia,"
"Atala," and "Ruth," were friends already introduced to the Centennial visitor;
their' productions had achieved success (at least among compatriots) in Europe,
and inspired the trumpets of that inky Fame who blows through the lines of
the newspaper. Strollers through the Exposidon lingered over the works to
which names were attached that had long been the burden of the correspond-
ent's budget and the tourist's tale, to see how these samples would bear the
experiment of inspection outside the studio and of comparison with the craft
of Europe. It was a work of verification. Of this widely- vaunted merit our
engravings are the test. On page 127 we spoke of Rogers's figure of "Ruth."
Since we inserted that attractive and favorite conception, our engravers have
prepared other American compositions, which we will proceed to notice. A
short description will suffice.
Mr. T. R. Gould's "West Wind" was lent to the Exposition by its owner, Mr.
Powers, of Rochester, N. Y. This smiling apparition, advancing over the land with
her soft even step, and die ripple of her flowing skirts, has not the look of a Greek
creation. Instead of the progeny of the antique religions, with their carefully-
assigned postures and their rigidly-dictated attributes, we see an original illus-
tration of one of the powers of nature, made expressive with all the touches
that modern fancy can invent. Some offspring of the famed marriage of Zephyr
and Flora may have followed a ship of passage, lightly emigrating on the wings
of the air, and set up in our country a new mythology. The "West Wind" is
represented as a slender nymph, with hair blowing off from the forehead, catching
witli one hand her fluttering kirde, and fleeting on tip-toe over the leafy sward
that sleeks its rough herbage at her passing. Careless and American in aspect,
her pulse-beats throbbing through a belt of Western stars, the glad incarnation
seems to have just cooled in the Pacific the light foot she sets on the shore
of an untamed continent. The best quality to be found in Mr. Gould's work
we think to be the apparent lightness and elasticity he has contrived to give
to a block of so many hundred-weight of marble.
Mr. P. F. Connelly sent to Philadelphia a large number of meritorious
works, of which the "Ophelia" occupied the most conspicuous position, being
placed in the principal American gallery (C), of Memorial Hall, along with his
O PILE ILIiLc
TJ, S .International ExhiiltiorLl875,
GEBBIE &_BARR1E.
jV. Zagorsky, Pinx.
Old Russian Couple.
29^ THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I Tl 0 N, 1876.
own group of "Honor and Death," and the "First Pose" of Mr. Howard
Roberts. We dedicate a full-page plate to this composition. It is a figure full
of shrinking modesty and grace, clothed in a well-imagined mediaeval costume —
the whole statue elaborate and decorative in its effect, without a trace of mental
disorder. We hear of Hamlets with the part of "Hamlet" left out. Mr. Con-
nelly's Ophelia is an Ophelia with the madness left out. The incident selected
is where the wild maid presents the pansies to her brother. The name of
these flowers being French for "thoughts," and the gift being combined with
rosemary, the symbol of remembrance, he accepts the token as a reminder of
the account due from Hamlet, who has killed the father of this foredoomed
brother and sister. The story will soon terminate in Ophelia's death, as well
as that of the brother, slain in play by Hamlet's hand with a poisoned weapon
provided for his own destruction. The moment when Ophelia distributes her
flowers is one of the most affecting in the tragedy. It is recorded of the great
Siddons that in the "pray you, love, remember," she gave a curious exhibition
of the sudden lapse into intelligence and shrewdness often seen in mad people ;
she looked at Laertes with a penetrating glance that seemed to dispel for a
moment the cloud of her insanity, leaving a very weird and harrowing effect
on the minds ot her spectators. The sculptor's conception in this statue is
entirely different. It is the tenderness and hapless lot of the young noble-
woman that he would represent; he shrouds her all about with sadness and
beauty and the premonition of doom, and prepares us for her imminent fate,
as she will sin*/ and drown amon^r the willows of the brook.
The statue of "Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii," by Randolph Rogers,
was contributed by its present owner, Mr. James Douglas, likewise the pos-
sessor of the before-mentioned figure of "Ruth," by the same artist. Mr. Rogers
is a native of Virginia. Tall, distinguished in appearance, and a delightful
companion, he is one of the indispensable members of the American colony at
Rome. His "Nydia," which has been so great a favorite with his countrymen
that he has had to execute a number of repliche, illustrates the heroine of
Bulwer's "Last Days of Pompeii." The preface to that work will explain to
the reader how the novelist conceived the idea of depicting a blind maiden as
a participant in the catastrophe of the Vesuvian city, her habits of activity
under her affliction giving her an advantage in the hour of sudden night.
if>
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FINE ART.
299
Around this thought of the superiority of an intelligent blind person in time
of darkness, suggested to the novelist in conversation, he has with incom-
Signor Borghi, ^ciilp.
Rienzi.
parable constructive ability made to revolve the whole procession of Pompeiian
discoveries as we see them, as well as the plot of an ingenious love-tale. In
Mr. Roo-ers' statue we see the sightless slave hurrying through the streets of
300 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Pompeii, never heeding the faUing column that the disturbance has hurled at
her very feet, and intently listening for every trace that will guide her to her
Greek lover. The figure perfectly represents the act of walking by the sense
of the ear, not of the sight. Mr. Rogers has been a very successful prac-
titioner in his beautiful art. He is the designer of the bronze doors (cast at
Munich) of the new extension ot the capitol, at Washington, representing the
life of Columbus. He was selected to carry out the designs by Crawford of
the Washincrton Monument at Richmond, Virginia. His "Aneel of Resurrec-
tion" decorates the Colt Monument, at Harttord, Connecticut. He is likewise
the sculptor of the monument to Lincoln in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia; the
Michigan Soldiers' Monument, and the Soldiers' Monument in Providence,
Rhode Island. It may be mentioned as a curious ju.xtaposition, showing how
high an order of talent can be found stooping to a subordinate position in
impoverished Italy, that Mr. Rogers had with him for a long time, as assistant,
the sculptor of the "Telegram of Love" and "Africaine" (see pages 32 and
40) — Professor Caroni.
Thackeray, in "The Newcomes," praises "Sir Bulwer Lytton's delightful
story, which has become the history of Pompeii" — thus atoning in his latter
days for the unmerciful rithcule he heaped on "Bulwig" in his youth. But
Thackeray sees a comic side to the tragedy of the town. "What would be a
better figure than Pliny's mother, whom the historian describes as exceedingly
corpulent, and walking away from the catastrophe with slaves holding cushions
behind her, to shield her plump person from the cinders .''" This deriding notice
of the misfortunes of a historical family is merel)- quoted for the grain of
actuality it contains, in instancing the only available defences which in that day
of peril were found convenient. The bewildered inhabitants of Pompeii, fleeing
from their homes, seized the pillows from the bed-room and the cushions from
the triclinium, as the obvious protection against a shower of cinders. These
homely shields could not well be represented in art, but Guarnerio has suggested
something of the kind in the figure of the cowering Pompeiian girl who draws
her tunic over her head, and who may be followed by attendants carrying the
cushions really employed. The statue illustrating "The Last Day of Pompeii"
(page 305) — by Guarnerio, whose contributions we have so liberally and with
so much justice cited — forms a fitting pendant to that of Mr. Rogers, as showing
\
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TJ. S.mtematioaal Extifflltioiil87 6 ,
GEBBIE & BASBIE
FINE ART.
301
A Feytn-Perrin, Pinx.
Fisherman's Wife a?id Soti.
302 ■ THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I T 1 0 N, i S 7 6.
another phase of the calamity. While the "Nydia" expresses above all the
darkness and the perplexity in finding one's way throughout a city overwhelmed,
the statue of the Italian sculptor expresses the suffocation and the lethargy.
His figure of the terrified victim is huddled as if in a corner, crouching, hesi-
tating and afraid to move. If she steps, it is with the shifting and doubling
pace of the hunted creature, who feels the toil closing around her.
Dedicated to the illustration of a corresponding epoch, though of widely
different feeling, is "The Amulet Seller," a large and brilliant painting by the
Russian artist, Henry Semiradsky. Our etcher has been uncommonly successful
in the plate. Semiradsky is one of the young painters who have established
themselves in Rome, and support that new, brilliant "Roman School" of painting
which subsists on the traditions and example of Fortuny. "The Amulet Seller"
was the largest and most important work of this dazzling clique contributed to
the Centennial Exposition. Indeed, there has not been seen in America any
other example in life-size of that rich mode of coloring, practised by Fortuny,
and of which the style is continued in the litde masterpieces of Alvares, and
Boldini, and Simonetti. Our painter has cemented together, like the bird that
makes its nest out of the gayest materials it can steal, a sort of rich hotch-
potch of every kind of lustrous and shining marble, gorgeous tissue, and
glittering jewel. In front, we see a flashing heap of bijoux — ropes of pearl,
onyx boxes, and enamels set in gold : then, two fair Roman women, in the
rich Eastern tissues introduced by the emperors who succeeded the Caesars ; in
the hand of one of them is a dark peacock fan ; these figures are relieved
against the polished variegated marbles of a Roman atrium, whose fountain is
decorated by the beautiful group of the Fawn and Infant Bacchus, now at
Naples. In the midst, like a bronze statue, crouches a Nubian peddler, who
has traveled all the wa)- from the Nile to sell these haughty dames the talis-
mans and amulets of the Eg^'ptian mythology. It was under the Flavian
emperors,— />arz'^««.y of base extraction. — that the taste for oriental religions
was especially developed in Rome. Under these — under Vespasian, Titus and
Domitian — the Eastern faiths, including Judaism, struck firm root in the Latin
soil, notwithstanding the Roman conquests and persecutions in Syria. The
prevalence of our own faith in Europe is directly connected with this Roman
yearning for religious mysteries, more subtle and subjective than the gross
THE ^aJMUMST SEJLILJBRo
u . S . latemaaoival Ezhibttion 157 6 ,
r.R'R'RT'P; A- "RA P-R-T-P .
FINE ART.
303
/; :^^.v I.^f r:,, ;■
Harvest Scene.
304 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, i8j6.
idol-worship of the heathen priests. The Imperial City, wearied with its excesses,
was turning away from its teachers, and asking for wisdom from the East.
Juvenal had represented the ''sly Jewess," pouring the hints of her religion
into the mistress's ear while occupied about the toilet. By the "Jewess,"
Juvenal, to whom such distinctions were unknown, may have meant the Chris-
tian ; and even the dusky African of this picture, intently whispering some
charm above the gem he is showing to these stately dames, is not a figure to
be wholly despised in the providential succession of historical influences. He
and his like played their part in stirring a current of mysticism and reverie,
deep down under the exterior hardness ot the Roman mind, which was ulti-
mately to lead to the worship of the One, — and then to Christianity.
The last school of artists which we would voluntarily seem to neglect
would be the small and select band of contributors from Russia. No other
set of exhibitors conferred on the Art Department a more striking and indi-
vidual set of works. We have described one of these Russian paintings —
Semiradsky's. We now wish to call attention to another work from a subject
of the Czar, the "Old Russian Couple," by Nicolas Zagorsky (page 297). We
are now wafted to the interior of an izba, or Russian peasant's habitadon. The
peasant of the country, or nioiijik, is here seen, not drunk, as in the sculpture
by Godebsky illustrated on page 217, but in his right mind and clothed; his
boots are so huge that he may be said to be interred in them ; and his flowing
shirt-sleeves are of a peculiar cut. He is occupied in breaking loaf-sugar, from
the original mass of it on the floor by his side ; for this he uses the pincers,
with prongs terminating in balls, ordinarily employed for the purpose. At his
elbow his good wife sits at the samovar, whence she draws the family tea, not
into cups, but into tumblers. The cat waits expectant, with a vigilance that
would almost seem to be unspoiled by selfish aims, for the tea and sugar will
not do her much good. It is a pretty piece of Darby and Joan life from the
banks of the Neva.
Mr. Nordenberg transports us to Sweden, with his "Wedding in a Country
Church" (pages 246-7). It is a homely, pleasant scene, with the peculiar
innocuousness of the village type plainly stamped on every countenance. In
this rustic temple, — so different from our Fifth Avenue congregations, — all the
congregation know each other, and all will presently adjourn to dance at the
3o6 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
feast. The kneeling couple receive the benediction of the clergyman, whose
mind is already running, it may be, on the chosen slice of fat goose that will
presendy be his portion at the wedding-table. The hobbledehoy who holds up
the evergreen is already practising the glances of courtship on the innocent
gawk of a school-girl whose large hand is decorated with an unaccustomed
glove and a bouquet. A very charming group, in this region, is the pair of
pleased and sober-sided parents, by no means without a kind of unpretending
dignity, who guard between their knees the little demure maiden who sits on
the kneeling-cushion and attends to her nosegay of sweet country flowers.
Mr. Nordenburg's work, somewhat defective in color, rather gains by our large
and careful ensfravinof.
M. Auguste Bartholdi is a craftsman born to petrify the world of men with
astonishment, and turn them into a world of statues. With true Alsatian energy
(he is a native of Colmar) he flies about the globe in a predestinated way,
dropping colossi from his pockets as he hovers, affi.xing bas-reliefs to the top
of a church-steeple in Boston, planting a lion as big as a hill on the rock at
Belfort in the Vosges, gratifying New York with a statue of Lafayette, and
offering to Fairmount Park that titanic Hand of Liberty whose tremendous
finger-nails were reflected in the shuddering waters of the Lake. Unable to
do justice to the alarming versatility of this inexhaustible producer, who formed
an E.xposition within an E.xposition by the variety of his contributions at Phila-
delphia, we content ourselves with representing one of his quieter subjects,
more pleasing perhaps because more unpretending. His "Young Vine-Grower,"
a bronze design for a fountain (see engraving on page 243) was exhibited in
the middle of the principal French room in Memorial Hall. It is too simple
to need explanation. The strapping young vintner, fatigued with his work of
treading out the grapes, sits down panting on a stump, his dog beside him,
and drinks from a key of new wine, which he lifts with a free action in his
hands. In the fountain when complete, a stream would run from the bung-hole
of the keg directly into the open mouth of the figure : this was represented in
the specimen on exhibition by a slender thread of glass. It is a graceful
thought gracefully expressed. This is not the place to speak of M. Bartholdi's
intentions and performances in detail, — of his projected Washington Monument,
of his projected Statue of Liberty, of his public fountains, his oil-paintings, his
//. S. Marks, Pmx.
The Oniiihologist,
308 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
plaster-casts. The disconcerting thing about him is that, so prolific, so Protean,
his works are yet full of merit in every instance.
The skill of French painters in delineating the figure is shown even in a
subject so overpoweringly o'ershadowed with landscape as Guillon's Monastery-
Garden, engraved on page 279. Here, among these colossal, sponge-like trees,-
solid with years of tufted growth in the balmy Midi, the interest of the scene
they overshadow is immensely enhanced by the presence, at first hardly dis-
covered, of the stealing figures of the monks. You pick them out by ones
and twos and threes at a time, wherever the sylvan shadow is darkest and
vaguest; here descending a solitary path, lonely as Dante in the by-ways of
Florence ; here loitering near a bench ; here grouped beside the narrow
monastery-wall, over which they look with irrepressible longing, upon that
world whose fields are \<1iitening to the harvest. The whole sentiment of this
very able picture depends upon the skill which is thrown into the minute
human figures; in part, upon the very minuteness of those figures, tor it is
important to the solemnity of the trees that they should look gigantic. These
cherry-stone carvings of statuesque monks are done with a purpose and with
expression: and no wonder they succeed; for M. Guillon, before making him
self a landscapist, studied human anatomy and figure-painting with all care,
under the great painter of Lc Soir, M. Gleyre.
The Eastern group called "The Sentinel," engraved on page 275, is by
Albert Maignan, who sent besides to the Exposition a "Helen at the Fountain,"
and "The God of the Woods." Like Gerome's "Muezzin," this composition
gains in originality by its singular outlook from the roof of a building. On
the summit of some fortress, such a stronghold as has been manned and
watched with equal anxiety many a day by the soldiers of the Turk during
the present invasion of the Russians, the Sentinel and a pair of soldiers are
turning their heads towards the bay that washes their citadel. The group,
armed to the teeth, gives the artist a welcome opportunity to expatiate on that
bric-a-brac which painters love — the helmet with its chain-cape, the yataghan,
the inlaid pistols, the shield, the battle-ax. High over the fort rise the horrible
poles, set with strong butchers' hooks, upon which are exposed the heads of
the enemy. One of these is even now festering there, among the wheeling
birds of prey. Amid the lower types and baser natures represented in this
n
2t
jn
I
3IO THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
vivid picture, we are interested in the calm scrutiny and thoughtful mien of
the Sentinel. Charged with a higher dut}^ he outwatches his baser companions.
Perhaps his loftier mind is sent out towards the future and towards the North,
where a mighty and jealous foe is gathering* and he may calculate the chances
of resistance, and the length of days that may be granted to his nation among
the peoples of the earth.
Of more serious excellence and graver effort is the "Spinning-Girl of Megara"
(see page 291), by Louis Ernest Barrias, of Paris — a figure that was cast in silver-
bronze, and placed in one of the long galleries of the Art-Annex. Placed upon
a beautiful ottoman of silver, which represents oriental inlaid-work, the maiden
sits cross-legged upon her low pedestal, her lap covered with fine and semi-
classical folds of drapery. Her right hand twirls the spindle, her left is lifted
high with the distaff. Something of the old Greek grace and simplicity — the
simplicity of the heroines of Homer — must be yet lingering among the villagers
of this half-way station between Athens and Corinth. Although she wears
Turkish ornaments and sits on a Turkish seat, this damsel addresses herself
to her task with the free-limbed elegance of one of Penelope's handmaidens.
"Carrick Shore," of which we give the engraving on page 287, was one of
those obliging loans with which the Royal Academy illustrated the history and
the evolution, as well as the present development, of British art. The painter
of this scene, like several of those upon the English catalogue, is no longer
among the living. William Daniell died in 1837, at the age of sixty-four years.
Eor a long time he traveled in India, with another painter — to wit, his uncle —
engaged in the preparation of a series of Eastern views, of which, however,
our artist executed by far the larger part. The joint work of the nephew and
uncle appeared in 1808, in six volumes, under the Utle of "Oriental Scenery."
The agreeable reminiscence of the Scotch coast which we publish, with its pic-
turesque castle and far-stretching ocean distance, is one which will be the more
welcome because those who know Daniell at all, know him best as a delineator
of tropical scenes.
Theodore Furmois, a Belgian painter of repute, died at Ixelles in 1871.
We present on page 289 a copy of his excellent picture of "The Mill," or, as
its fuller title has it, "Le Moulin en Campine." It is a peaceful, happy scene—
the ancient mill, patched and mended, but good for service yet, and deriving
FINE ART.
311
moral support
from the neigh-
boring tuft of
oaks that, Hke
itself, were once
better thatched
and showed
lewer bare beams
to the sky. Close
by the wheel sits
a boy, watching
the slow system
of paddles going
round, and won-
dering- how so
much work can
be really done
by all that sys-
tematic laziness,
that eternal draof
of unwilling
strength, as ex-
emplified in the
heavy following
of one huge drip-
ping step after
the other. The
ducks plash in
the pond, the
broad fields shine
in the sun, and
Youth sits ling-
ering and look-
ing, unconscious
P. Guar)ieriQ, Sculpt.
Pompeii.
that the mill-
wheel is a gigan-
tic and inexor-
able clock, slow-
ly turning off his
best and happi-
est hours, to be
succeeded by
hours of toil, and
hardship — and
memory.
I 'ive la Baoa-
o
telle! is a watch-
word that has
rescued many a
victim of indi-
gestion, and we
relieve the press-
ure of our more
tragic illustra-
tions by the cop}-
of Signor Enrico
Braga's statue of
a "Mountebank"
(page 293). This
figure takes us
into the wild folly
of the Neapoli-
tan throng on
the Marinella. A
lively 3'oung fel-
low, in the Italian
street-juggler's
costume, makes
312 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
his trained dog leap over a whip. As the astute creature, with that air of
intense repressed excitement pecuhar to the trained dog in his hour of busi-
ness, goes backward and forward over the obstruction, the trainer also starts
from side to side without moving his feet, throwing his body almost out of
balance, as the clever sculptor has observed and recorded.
A beautiful Holland costume has been studied for us in the picture we
engrave on page 295 — "Fisherman's Wife of the Zuyder Zee." The artist, Felix
Cogen, is a Belgian, born at St. Nicolas, and now residing at Brussels. The
painting we illustrate is devoted to the old quiet subject of suspense — the
patience that can only linger and yearn, while the horizon is clouded, and the
gathering haze prepares a storm that may separate the anxious watcher and
her mate for ever. Many a poor fishwife has thus waited, through the lingering
hours of evening, while "the blinding mist came down and hid the land," for
the glimpse of a sail that has never appeared. Meanwhile the happy sea-birds,
whose mates can freely travel with them, come flying out of the impenetrable
fog, bringing life but no intelligence. The simple peasant looks at the clus-
tering birds, and thinks it hard that they can pass so easily from her husband's
boat, and chirp and chatter, but cannot tell. The women of the coasts of
Brittany have a lugubrious song which they sing to the sea-gulls, the goelands:
"Oh, goelands, goelands, bring us back our husbands!" It is a curious thing
that, while painters and sculptors are constantly representing the wives and
families of fishermen, so few poets have taken them for a theme. There is no
more poignant situation for the imagination to work upon than that daily sepa-
ration of fond bridegroom and bride when the risk is always death. In other
crafts, when the good woman sends off her husband to his work, with well
packed kit and parting kiss, she can count on a reasonable certainty of meeting
again at eventide. But the fisherman's wife dismisses her husband to the
elements that hate man openly — the storm that is ever trying to wreck him,
and the sea that always wants to drown.
Upon those rocks the waves shall beat
With the same low and murmuring strain.
Across those waves, with glancing feet,
The sunset rays shall seek the main.
But when together shall they meet
Upon that hither shore again?
A softer as-
pectof the same
relation of lov-
ino; and waitino-
is shown by M.
Feyen-Perrin
(see page 301).
Here we have
two fio-Lires —
"The Fisher-
man's Wife and
Child." This
time the sky is
a promise of
lono^-continuinof
calm, and the
sea is gflass.
The fishers
young wife sits
on the quay.
In the distance
we see the sar-
dine-boats gaily
standing in to
shore, an argu-
ment that soon
the boat, the
vessel that holds
her heart in it,
shall grate
against the
rough granite
wharf and tie
to that rusty
iron nng-
*-!,_-. Cnstcllt^ni Qotuctioti.
Fig. ^. — Colossal Statue of Bacchus.
hangs at her
feet. Meantime
the young mo-
ther clasps the
head of her
child to her
bosom, and
looks down
upon her off-
spring as if it
were an omen
of security. Can
the elements be
malignant when
such a fine babe
is waiting to be
dandled by its
father? Moth-
ers have an im-
perious reason-
ing for such
cases of the
heart, and sure-
ly the heavens
will never be so
monstrously il-
logical as to
hinder the com-
pleting ot such
a happy group.
The canvas of
M. Feyen-Per--
rin is excel-
P^- lently brushed,
in a somewhat
313
314 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
larger and bolder style than the same artist's picture of "Melancholy" we rep-
resented on page 57.
The statue of Cola di Rienzi, by Ambrogio Borghi, of Milan (page 299),
represents that "last of Romans" while still a boy, "mewing his mighty youth,"
to use the words of Milton, and crouching meditatively in his seat, like an
eagle ready to swoop upon the prey, or a lion about to spring. This piece
of sculpture has a higher purpose and a better style than the one we lately
(page 281) introduced by the same artist, "The Mother's Treasure." Modern
Rome and its environs are full of localities which the cicerone points out as
connected with the great liberator of the fourteenth century. Between the
Ghetto and the Temple of Vesta we see the strange house he lived in, and
which he stuck over with old statues and bric-a-brac, as Scott did Abbotsford —
Rienzi's reminiscences of his studies ot antiquities along with Petrarch. In the
Lateran Basilica we are shown the ancient Roman font in which he bathed, the
night before he showed himself to the Romans in the full insignia of knight-
hood, and summoned the Pope and the electors of Germany to appear before
him. By this sacrilege — for the font had been consecrated by the baptism of
Charlemagne — his own soldiers believed that he prepared his downfall. At St.
Angelo in Pescheria, about the same time, he passed a night of vigils, to issue
thence in armor, with the Pope's vicar in his train. To the door of St. Giorgio
in Velabro he nailed the parchment announcing that the Romans were going
to return to their "good estate." Going out of the Lateran after his bath, the
gilded nostrils of the great equestrian statue we still admire on the Capitol
were made to flow with wine and water for the festival of his confirmation as
Tribune. At Tivoli we see the public square of St. Lorenzo, where he harangued
the people, and at Palestrina the stout old fortress he was unable to take, so
ably was it defended by the haughty scion of one of those old Roman patrician
families he chiefly warred against, a Colonna of the period. Twice made
Tribune, he died "like a rat in a hole" (as Bulwer makes him say) In a popular
etneute. In 1354. Visitors to the Centennial noticed an Impressive picture of
the death of Rienzi In Mr. Topham's canvas, in the large room of the British
exhibit. Italian sculptors are great revolutionists and liberty-lovers, and the
selection of Rienzi for his subject by SIgnor Borghi Is on a par with the various
topics, all representing the youth or inclplency of rebellion, of which samples
FINE ART.
31S
were seen in the Youne Franklin, Youngf Washincrton, Moses breaking- the
Crown of Pharaoh, Young Hannibal, and the maturer portraits of Mazzini and
Garibaldi : every one of them contributions to the eloquence of anti-Roman
independence, and as full of revolutionary meaning as the editorials of any
Communist newspaper. The chisel of Young Italy, until lately one of the last
resources of free expression, reveals strange readings between the lines, and
knows how to direct its strokes in the way of protest. We recur for another
Castettani Antiques.
Fig. 14. — Boy ExtractLijg a Thorn.
glance to Borghi's statue, reminded that it is not only meant as a work of art,
but as a pamphlet : we see that an inscription has been carved upon its base —
at once a cognomen and a tutelary watchword —
" Then turn we to the latest Tribune's name,
From Rome's ten thousand Tyrants turn to thee.
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame.
The friend of Petrarch, hope of Italy,
Rienzi, last of Romans and their chief.
Her new-born Numa thou, with reign, alas! too brief!"
The simple methods of antiquity, stupid and charming as when men of the
Stone Age first struck them out from savagery, still obtain in many parts of
3i6 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B ITI 0 N, 187 6.
Western France. In Brittany to-day, scythes are sharpened by hammering out
the edge upon a Uttle portable anvil ; and winnowing is done by emptying out
wheat and chaff on a windy morning, after the grain has been trodden by the
family cow on a floor of beaten dirt, cemented together by the cow's own
contributions, in a style we cannot more particularly describe. From this dirt
floor comes the inordinate share of grit which distinguishes the wheat of that
part of the country ; the miller of Montfermeil, in Les Miserables, speaks of
"the gravel which abounds in certain grains, especially in Breton grain." These
primitive ways of working are always the delight of the artist, and Emile
Laporte has made a striking group of his two peasant girls, standing in a
breezy open space by the sea-shore, to shake out the grain from the large
sieves, which falls all around, enveloping the winnower with the drops of a
golden fountain. We present an engraving of this picture on page 303.
M. Laporte, a Paris artist, exhibited also at the Centennial Fair a Grape-
gathering scene, which was hung near the present painting. He is, we believe,
the son of Emile Henri Laporte, painter of a "Faust and Marguerite," who is
mentioned as his sole instructor.
We will now pay our duty to certain British artists, whose works did much
to e.Kcite the interest and sympathy of a home-bred American crowd. In the
large Gallery D of Memorial Hall, so imposing to the throng from the weight
and mass of its ju.\taposed chcfs-d'ceuvrCy three whimsical subjects were often
dwelt upon with delighted attention by even the careless Gallios of the picture-
visitors.
"Returning the Salute" is by J. E. Hodgson, an Associate of the Royal
Academy, who also contributed "A Needy Knife-Grinder." The picture we
illustrate represents to the life the happy-go-lucky, ramshackle dignities kept
up in the ports of the "Porte." Time was when the Moslem navy, comprised
under the convenient name of "the Algerines," was the terror of European
■ commerce. The British Female would scarcely trust herself even to make the
necessary voyage to India in search of a husband ; she had only a precarious
choice before her — either to be sunk and drowned with her favorite lap-dog by
"the Algerines," or, scarcely better, to become the bride of a Bey, or a Dey,
or a Sofi, or some equally vague and uncomfortable dignitary. Now the glory
of Islam's navy has departed, and the old war-like port-cities can hardly muster
FINE ART.
317
a sound cannon with which to fire a salute. In Mr. Hodgson's picture a vessel
enterincr the harbor, and politely saluting from its well-cleaned, varnished and
sharp-bellowing caronades, makes it necessary that the compliment should be
Casteltani Anti/jiies.
Fig. ro. — Bust of Euripides.
returned. The old crazy cannon is loaded with a heavy charge ; the sons of
-Mohammed look on expectant, from a safe distance ;
'Whiskered and brown their cheeks are;
Enormous wide their breeks are;"
the military commander pronounces the word "Fire!" or whatever, in the lan-
guage of the Faithful, corresponds to that incendiary command. The negro
who bears the lin"stock advances, nmltiini rductaiis ; arriving near the piece ot
3.18 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, 1 8 7 6.
ordnance he hesitates, and will go no farther; then the commander pokes him
in the rear with the point of his yataghan ; then the gigantic coward crawls
step by step to the touch-hole, shielding his face with the palm of his hand, as
a cook protects herself from a hot stove. It is a scene of oriental ceremony
which appeals to every one by its side of excessive personal prudence.
Nobody could help laughing at it. In our opinion, however, the negro is quite
right; for the gun will infallibly burst.
Mr. Henry Stacy Marks, another Associate, contributed two pictures of
goodly size and of taking subject. One was called "The Ornithologist," and
represented the man of profound bird-lore — himself a capital piece of charac-
terization— in the seclusion of his house, surrounded by every kind of winged
biped that can be found in the aviaries of the Zoological Garden. The great
variety and abundance of the birds introduced into his picture gave Mr. Marks
a chance to show his own uncommon erudition in this kind of matters; the
ornithologic specimens were carefully discriminated and learnedly drawn.
Amongst them all, elated with the study of his latest favorite, the Ornitholo-
gist resembled Dominie Samson amid the books. The picture, though chalky
and hard, was distinguished by some very skillful designing and fanciful grouping,
while in expression and originality it was most conspicuous. Mr. Marks' other
subject was called "The Three Jolly Post-Boys." They were sitting at an inn-
table, chaffing and being chaffed by the bar-maid. N. P. Willis used to wonder
at the eternal youth of post-boys, but these were elderly though well-preserved
men, hard of feature and shrunken and chapped and baked by eternally riding
in the wind, while some Rabelaisian fund of "smartness" in the soul kept them
forever juvenile and downy. We present an engraving of the first-mentioned
of Mr. Marks' contributions.
From three subjects sent to Philadelphia by J. MacWhirter, of London, we
select that known as " Out in the Cold" because of the appeal it makes — we
dare not say the fellow-feeling it creates — within the heart and consciousness
of ever}' one. We do not pretend to state just why it is, but people will
melt to the pathos of donkey-subjects, in art or literature, sooner than they
will to any other. We know a lady whose husband possesses an excellent
painting of donkeys by Robbe, the Belgian animalist. When the gentleman is
about to go to his business in the morning she kisses him, of course, and then,
FINE ART.
319
without a thought of the paradox, as soon as the parlor is a scene of loneH-
ness she goes and kisses the noses of those donkeys in succession. How
much more is the donkey a sympathetic creature when locked out, on the wrong
side of the stable, alone with the frost, like Lear with the thunder. Lear's
storm, by-the-bye, was a delicious, tepid, enviable sudarium, as proved by the
CasteUani Antiques.
Fig. 9. — Head of Bacchus, Greek.
allusions to harvest in the play; it was an august luxury; a Roman epicure
would have begrudged it him. But the donkey, as dramatized by MacWhirter,
has a much more real grievance than the king of tragedy, for he is out in the
cold with no gloves or boots on. Mr. MacWhirter, then, has well chosen a
theme, if popularity is his aim. We observe, even in literature, that a pathetic
writer who would introduce a masterly episode goes to work and describes a
donkey. Look at Sterne. If Sterne had taken a sheep, or a dog, or a mule,
320 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
nobody would remember the passage. The donkey is appointed by nature and
fate as the model that is to sit to us for our masterpieces. Southey tried to
celebrate a pig, Wordsworth a goldfish, and their efforts are hardly remem-
bered. Ruskin somewhere asks if any Christian can explain the trials of a
cab-horse. If he had said a donkey, he would have achieved his immortality
as a writer — and given us a text for our picture !
The Castellani Antiques. — One of the most fascinating departments of the
Paris World's Fair of 1867 — that entitled the "History of Labor," and exhib-
iting the finer results of human ingenuity from the earliest ages, — was not
systematically imitated in the Philadelphia Exposition. Its place was approxi-
mately filled, however, by the collections of a single exhibitor. Signer Alessandro
Castellani, of Rome.
Castellani has long been known as the most artistic of modern jewelers.
He is such a classic in Italy, that travelers ot education would as soon miss
one of the fine galleries of paintings as the magnificent display of antique
jewels and their modern imitations spread ,out in the splendid shop kept by
himself and his brother on the Piazza di Spagna. His name has even been
immortalized in poetry. Mr. Browning's wonderful story of "The Ring and the
Book" opens with the following lines: —
•• Vou see ihis Rinij? 'Tis Rome-work, made to match —
Bv Castellani's imitative craft^
Etrurian circlets found, some happy mom,
After a dropping April : found alive
Spark-like 'mid unearthed slope-side fig-tree roots
That roof old tomb^ at Chussi ; soft, you see,
Yet crisp as jewel cutting."
Castellani is not only a jeweler; the treasures of "old tombs at Chussi"
and other repositories of antique art are interesting to him not alone as models
for his clever workmen, but intrinsically for their antiquarian interest. He is a
collector and an archaeologist as well as a craftsman. In the course of years,
advantage being taken of his position in the midst of the excavations and dis-
coveries of Italian treasure-hunters, he has bought and amassed a wonderful
collection of relics of undoubted antiquity. The whole of his valuable museum
he was generous enough to bring over to America ; and no part of the Expo-
CASTELLANI ANTIQUES.
32!
sition attracted such solid crowds of admirers as the Castellani coUection in
Memorial Hall. Etruscan gold-work ; Greek and Roman jewelry ; engraved
gems, seals, cameos, intagli ; Byzantine enamels and Papal signets ; old bronzes :
Greek marble statuary, in a few well-selected specimens; and a splendid ceramic
collection, made up the wealth of this splendid horde. We present eno-ravincrs
of several of the specimens, leaving to the recollection of the visitor the vastly
larger number ot curios which our space does not permit us to illustrate.
No. I represents a single ear-ring- of gold, of which the mate is not in the
collection. It is
in pure Greek
taste, though
found in Italy;
being either an
importation, or
manut'actured by
a Greek artist on
Italian soil. The
date assigned to
it is 350 B.C. It
is of enormous
Ccistellani Atttiynes.
Size hpin*^^ anont
' '^ Fig. I. Gold Ear-ring, Greek design. Fig. ^. Helix-shaped Ornament.
four inches in " 2. DolplUn Vemis Ear-ring. " 4. A'ecklace, B. C.-joo.
length, and per-
minute beads have been loosened by the action of time. The pendant is a
beautiful Greek face, showing the symmetry of the best period, from whose
mimic necklace hang the amphorae or wine-jars. Its size, grace and good
preservation make this object exceedingly attractive.
No. 2, of which the original is about two inches long, is one of a pair of
ear-rings in the collection, representing the dolphins which were emblematic of
Venus as a goddess sprung from the sea. The eyes, fins and other details of
the figure are executed in the professional materials of the jeweler's art, instead
of by engraving or moulding; that is to sa}^ they are sketched upon the
smooth surface by lines of rope-work, applied and soldered on. The minute
gold cords ot which this rope-work consists, so delicate yet so even, and so
haps was never
worn, being found
as a votive offer-
ing in a Roman
tomb. It consists
of a curved plate
of gold, bearing
several stripes of
minute rosettes
executed in grain-
work soldered on
to the plate ; so
admirable is the
soldering, that
none of these
322 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, i S 7 6.
firmly soldered as to become quite homogeneous with the body of the object,
constitute the grand technical superiority of antique jewelry, in which no modern
artisan has even made an approximate approach to the ancients until Castel-
lani's time. The date of this object is about the same as that of the above-
mentioned votive ear-ring ; the place of its discovery, Tarentum in Calabria.
No. 3 is one of a pair of objects from Metapontum, whose precise appli-
cation has been a matter of question among the archaeologists. These orna-
ments o-enerally consist of hollow tubes of gold (though specimens of massive
crold have been found), filled in with copper so as to be completely solid, and
variously ornamented, but always bent around so as to form a helix-shaped
coil, like a turn and a half of ^ female heads ; these four
the thread of a screw. The >^^^^s. heads seem to wear, them-
present examples are dcco- mREvocftw^i^ selves, similar ornaments ap-
rated at the middle ot the vmmiwjanvmw plied as ear-nngs. The coils,
bend with pretty floral de- \vm_^ however, from their size, could
signs, and each of them is fin- <^"""- -""■*"" not be run throtigh the ears;
Fig. 6. — Roman Bondsman's ... i-rr i
ished at the two ends with Badge of slavery. and it is difficult to imagine
very beautiful and refined just how they could be at-
tached. Signor Castellani himself was wont to declare that he had never been
able to solve this difficulty to his satisfaction until he inspected the Phoenician
statuary dug up in the island of Cyprus by the American consul. General
Cesnola, and by him brought over to this country. Several of these statues
wear ear-rings resembling the heli.x-shaped ornaments represented in No. 3 ;
and Signor Castellani, after inspecting them, became convinced that the ancients,
taking advantage of the softness of the metal, simply compressed the lobe of
the ear between two turns of the coil, which clung by Its own elasticity. Some
of the coins of Sicily, and of that part of Italy setded by the early Greeks and
called Greater Greece, show finely engraved heads wearing on their ears what
appear to be silver pendants. It is not quite certain, however, that this theory
of their application is the right one, or even that they are ear-rings. General
Cesnola, in speaking of the ver)' same statues which formed the evidence of
Signor Castellani (and whose rude workmanship leaves such small details mainly
conjectural), argues that the ear-rings of double coil there represented are seen
at right-angles to the direction they would assume if applied as his compatriot
CASTELLANI ANTIQUES.
supposes. A great number ot similar objects were found in Cyprus by our
consul, forming part of the "Curium Treasure." These objects, sometimes plain
and sometimes ornamented like our specimen, have attracted the notice of
antiquarians, and, as the simplest subject becomes tantalizing- so long as it
cannot be explained, essays have been written to investigate the purpose of the
"helix-coils" General Cesnola, in considering the plainer specimens, imagined
that they were "ring-
money," from the fact
of their beingr found
deposited in large
quantities in a treas-
ure-house where no
coins of any other kind
were found. But this
theory is unsatisfac-
tory to a British anti-
quarian, C. W. King,
M. A., of Trinity Col-
lege, Cambridge, a
specialist in antique
o-ems. The latter ar-
chaeologist reasons
that if the coils were
ring-money they would
be solid, whereas the
Castcllani A'ltiques,
Fig. 7. — Actor with Comic Mask, in Terya-cotta,
majority show the
copper openly appear-
ino- at each end, either
from the ornaments
having dropped off, or
from none having ever
existed. "A little light
seems thrown on the
difficulty," says Mr.
King, "by two words
of Homer, who in de-
scribing the brooch
"^x fastening Ulysses'
mantle, says it 'was
made with double
pipes, and in iront
there was a figure in
relief.' " He there-
upon concludes that
the Greeks passed the ends of their draperies through these circlets, as modern
gentlemen pass their cravats through a scarf-ring. To our mind, the abundance
of projecting filigree-work about many of the specimens precludes this use of
them, which would quickly bend and break the fragile ornamentation. Perhaps
the best theory is one which Mr. King himself offers as an alternative: die
rings may have been used to confine the tresses of hair, which primitive
Athenians of both sexes were in the habit of collecting, and fastening with a
gold grasshopper or other ornament. For this use the decorated rings would
be very serviceable ; and there is no difficulty offered by the fact of their being
324
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
found in pairs, as in the case of the specimen we illustrate, considering that
the early Greeks wore matched tresses descending from each temple and falling
upon the shoulders.
Fig. 4 is the most ancient object we illustrate. It is a primitive necklace
dating from 700 b. c, and found at Cervetri. It is formed of rods of amber,
as thick as a common lead-pencil, set in gold at the extremities ; the two end-
pieces of the amber are separated by four small bullae or globe-shaped beads.
From the portion in front of the neck hang six ornaments in the shape of the
antique anchor or boat-cramp. This marine decoration may have been made
CasleUatti Antiques,
Fig. S. — Toilet Articles of a lady of Ancient Rome.
by an Etruscan jeweler in the days before Italy was called Italy, or it may
have been given to a beauty of the peninsula by an enamored ship-captain Irom
Phoenicia. Such an amber and gold necklace is mentioned in the Odyssey,
where one of the characters tells how the crafty Phoenician seamen captured
him in infancy, and led him into bondage. The child, with his mother and her
maidens, was securely sheltered in the house while a company of these Asiatic
rovers were visiting the place ; the foreign gentry had taken everything on
board their ships except the litde boy they meant to kidnap. At the last
moment, just as they were preparing to leave, one of the sailors entered the
mansion where the child's mother sat among her maidens, and gave them a
necklace "of amber and gold." While the women-folk were gossiping over the
beaut)- of the necklace, he signed to the young lad's Phoenician nurse, who was
his confederate; and the traitress carried him off to the fleet of her country-
men, leavinsr him amonof the slave-catchers.
Fig. 5, page 313, is the largest object in the Castellani collection, being a
colossal statue of Bacchus. It was found in the ruins of the villa of PoUio Vedius
CASTELLANI ANTIQUES.
325
at Posilippo, near Naples — the region wliere Saint Paul landed on his way to
Rome; "and after one day the south wind blew and we came the next day to
Puteoli." The pleasure-grounds of the old Roman were diligently searched, as well
as the country for a mile around, for the missing arm (originally separate) which
is alone necessary to complete this fine figure — a treasure found but a few
years back. The Papal government, which by law had the first chance, declined
to pay the price demanded by the discoverer, and the prize thereupon fell to
the next bidder, Signor Castellani. No such imposing antique has ever been
Casteltant Antiques.
Fig, II. — Bronze Mirror.
Fi^. I2.--Mirror-Case.
brought to America, the headless Ceres on the facade of the Philadelphia
Academy alone bearing any comparison with it. The subject of the colossus
is that manifestation of Bacchus which the Greeks fabled as connected with his
conquest of India — a bloodless victory, with raving priestesses and mischievous
satyrs for an army, and for trophies the vineyards he planted, the philosophy
of peace and delight he left, and the communion of the grape. This type of
Bacchus is the figure of a philosophy that is truly Indian in its equanimity and
magnanimous repose. The partakers of Nature's festival are happy and at one
with each other. Accordingly the Indian Bacchus is a figure of benevolence
and massive calm ; the distinction of sex is obliterated in this exaltation of the
326 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, .i 8 7 6.
idea of universal peace, and he wears female robes and binds his hair in the
female knot, while the long beard which sweeps his breast still gives the hint
of a mighty wisdom and a patriarchal goodness. The ties that result from
feasting, the harmony of the hospitable table, are poetically magnified in the
ideal of Bacchus the Reconciler. Our statue represents a Sage-God — a figure
of sublime beauty, with the "two-story" forehead noticed in the heads of
Olympian Jupiter — the body completely draped like a Ceres, and the hair effemi-
nately bound in a large clump at the back, while it descends from behind the
ears in long ringlets. The marble is Greek, and was therefore an importation
among the ornaments of the Roman's country-seat. The execution is of a high,
though not the very highest, order of merit. The drapery, while it is nobly
cast about the figure, is a little hard about the folds. The face, in unusually
perfect preservation, is of badge of slavery, and appar-
careful and very elevated /^^ ^^ ently that of a determined
workmanship. ^^sP^ "-1^ lover of freedom, who had
Casteliani Antiques.
Fig. 6 is a great rarity. ^^, rs-Bronz. ciasp. twice tried to gain his liberty
It is a Roman bondsman's by the activity of his heels.
The original is about twice the diameter of our cut, and as thick as a stout
card. This very rare slave's tablet has been illustrated by Prof De Rossi, of
Rome. He informs us that before the time of the Christian emperor Constan-
tine, when an escaped slave was returned to his master, he had the right by
law to brand him on iiis brow with a red-hot stamp, that he might be easily
recognized if he tried to repeat his evasion. Constantine passed a law in which
he said that, "as on the brow of man was the image of God, no man had a
right to touch it; but instead of that, he should rivet a torque around his neck,
with a tablet bearing the master's name and residence." On the face of the
badge shown in the cut, we read the words, apparently inscribed after a first
escape, "Tene me, et revoca me in Foro Martis, ad Maximianum antlquarium."
This inscription is placed between two representations of the Clwismon, or
mark formed of the two first letters of Christ's name, Chi and Rho. On the
reverse we read another inscription, apparently written after he had been sold
by Maximianus, and had attempted to escape from a subsequent owner,
Elpidiius: "Tene me qui afugi, et revoca me in Celimontio, ad domu Elpidiivo
Bonoso." We are reminded of the proceeding of Saint Paul, whose beautiful
CASTELLANI ANTIQUES.
327
letter transmitted with the slave Onesimus, — "whom I iiave sent again," — and
who was perhaps decorated with a similar badge, is a lasting command for
masters to welcome their returning domestics, not as culprits, but as brothers
in Christianity.
Fig. 7 is a small Roman figure in terra-cotta. An actor has put on a
comic mask, at which his little dog barks and leaps upon him. Some Roman
theatre-lover has laughed at this toy, even as the modern frequenter enjoys his
plaster cast of the Shaughraun and dog Tatters.
The group in Fig. 8 is the inundus imdicbris or toilet collection of a lady
of ancient Rome.
The objects are all
of silver, but have
blackened with time,
and Signor Castel-
lani, in the true anti-
quarian's spirit, pre-
fers to keep them
with the evidence of
their antiquity upon
them, rather than
have them polished
into commonplace.
CasCeliaiti Antiques.
Bronze Bull found at Chiusi.
The pair of spoon-
like objects in front
are strigils, or
scrapers, with which
the ancients of both
sexes shampooed
the skin in the bath ;
they are both at-
tached, like keys to
a ring, to the circu-
lar spring seen im-
mediately behind
them. Back of the
ring is a globular vase for ointment, also of silver; and behind this is
a round silver box of four compartments, for cosmetics, with its lid along-
side.
With Fig. 9 we revert to the collection of antique marbles. It is a Greek
head of uncommon beauty, somewhat larger than life, the original scarcely
suffering in effect from the fact that, like the best of ancient statues, it has lost
the tip of the nose. The subject, like Fig. 5, is Bacchus, as proved from the
remains of the ivy-wreath around the hair; yet it is not the Indian, but the
young Bacchus, divested of all the self-contradicting emblems of mysticism, and
represented simply as a lovely youth, at the age when the suavity of the forms
approaches most nearly to a feminine aspect. The eyes are hollowed out, to
receive those gray or azure gems with which the ancients often counterfeited
328 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
the limpidity of the iris, but which, in all such specimens, have fallen out from
the disinteeratinCT influence of time.
Fig. 10 is a marble portrait-bust of the tragedian Euripides, of vigorous
character and in perfect preservation. It is remarkable for a slight depression
at the end of the nose, which does not appear in the portraits engraved by
Visconti. Euripides is known among the Greek play-writers for his selection
of family topics, revealing a modern spirit of tenderness scarcely known to the
other Greek writers whose works have come down to us. His play of Alcestis,
especially, em- gave herself to
bodies an un- ,^R^ .^^ ^^$> death for the
wifely affection, ^^^^S::— ^-^ >v' W: ^wkJ^^^^t, band, but who
in presenting '^^^^^^^ V.^^.^-.4.. x-^~-;^.i^^^^F^^^"- was brought
the feelings of -- "^ back from Ha-
'~> Castetlatii Anltgues.
the devoted Bronze Box. Dudshapc. dcS bv HcrCulcS,
spouse who and returned to
the arms of Admetus her lord. Browning has modernized this play of Euripides
in his poem " Balaustion's Adventure." Elizabeth Browning refers to him as
" Euripides the human.
With his droppings of w.irm tears."
His death was unusually horrible ; having taken refuge from the jealousies of
Athens in the court of Archelaus, he was torn to pieces by the dogs of
the Macedonian monarch, 407 b. c. It is Plutarch who gives us diat exquisite
story of the distant Sicilians, who so loved the muse of Euripides that they
restored to liberty those of their war-captives who could repeat his tragedies
or even passages from them, so that the poet was afterwards waited upon by
bands of enfranchised Greeks who humbly thanked him for their restoration to
life and happiness — an incident showing a higher degree of literary civilization
than is conceivable in our own times.
Fig. II, a bronze mirror; Fig. 12, a mirror-case; and Fig. 13, a bronze clasp,
need little special description. The mirror, Fig. 11, is a type of a class quite
abundant in the Castellani collection, tlie engraving of bronze with incised lines,
forming pictures, the traces being made distinct by a white cement anciently
CASTELLANI ANTIQUES.
329
filled into them, and yet remaining; the decoration on this object represents
three young men in Phrygian caps, and a female figure standing in their midst.
The mirror-case or cover. Fig. 12, is, however, not ornamented by incision, but
in bas-relief, and is selected for illustration because unique in this respect ; the
figures upon it, in repousse-work, represent Ganymede carried away by Jupiter
in the form of a large eagle, whose head can be distinctly seen just under the
handle ; his litde brothers are crouching on the ground at his feet, and his
young sister stands beside them. The mirrors, to the number of twenty, and
the cover for one of them, are part of the contents of twelve round bronze
cistae, or chests, resembling
small band-boxes, all found
in tombs of the Etruscan
period at the necropolis of
Palestrina, anciently known
as Praeneste, at a few miles'
distance from Rome. The
boxes, still in the Castel-
lani collection, are a foot
Cizstellani Antiques.
Fig. ij. — Comb, about twenty-one
hundred years old.
or more in dimensions each
way, and are engraved with
the same kind of incised
lines as those seen on the
mirror, outlining the picto-
rial scenes which com-
pletely cover them, and
which bear a general re-
semblance to the designs
Names in Etruscan letters
found on the vases of the Etruscan tombs,
are found on the boxes, and the scenes sometimes represent Italian legends
that passed current before the penetration of Greek literature. They
contained the toilet articles of wealthy ladies buried there, such as the mirrors
aforesaid, sponges, a child's shoe, combs, and the discerniculum, a bodkin some-
times ending in a litde comb, with which the hair was parted. Among the
treasure, small lumps of bronze, rudely cut into segments, defined the age of
the tombs, for they were the aes rude, or rough uncoined bronze, which passed
in Italy about 300 b. c, before the use of stamped dies was known.
Fig. 14 is the most fascinating of the marbles In the cabinet of Signor
Castellani, not even excepting the Indian Bacchus. It is a beautiful and nearly
perfect ancient replica, found at Rome, of the well-known Spinario, or "Boy
Extracting a Thorn." Many of the finer antiques were tirelessly reduplicated,
in the time of the original ardsts themselves, the modern sense of the obliga-
tions of copyright having been wandng among those generous inventors. Thus
there are many antique statues almost precisely in the attitude of the Venus
330 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H IB ITI 0 N, i8 7 6.
de Medici, several like the Venus of Milo, etc. The oldest Spinario is evidently
the bronze of the Capitol at Rome ; the slightly archaic character of the long
combed-out hair, and of the expressionless face, mark the antiquity of that
bronze ; the marble copy in the Louvre, and that in the Villa Borghese, are of
a later period, while this of Signor Castellani's is just sufficiendy removed from
the earliest style to acquire the most achieved graphic torce, without a hint of
the decline of art. The face has a winning expression of boyish trouble and
intentness ; the hair is in short, curled locks ; both expression and hair quite
different from the earlier bronze ; the flesh parts breathe with life throughout.
These characteristics are those of the realistic school of Pergamos, an oriental
town where art flourished, for the three first centuries of our era, in a purely
picturesque development scarcely trammeled by hieratic tradidons. Signor Cas-
tellani, who would fain attach everything to his beloved Rome by some lien of
association, is fond of reladng, apropos of the Spinario, a pretty story of
Mortius, the litde shepherd, who ran to the Roman Senate by night to give
them news of an incursion of the Ladns, never stopping in his course although
a great thorn had entered his foot. But the subject of the "boy and thorn,"
or young Olympian foot-racer impeded by a wounded heel, doubtless took shape
in Greek sculpture before the Roman Senate existed.
Fig. 15 is a bronze bull, found at Chiusi in Italy. It is about a foot in
length, and endrely admirable. The finish of the head, with its fine curled
forehead-locks, is especially in the best style of the Greek workman. It
resembles the finely designed bulls seen on the old coins of Thurium. The
sdff-looking support and stand are a modern structure of wood.
Figs. 16 and 17 are toilet objects found, like the mirrors, in the toilet-
cases of Preneste, and like them, about twenty-one hundred years old. The
first is a rouge-box in the form of a duck, carved in cedar, and six inches in
length. It still contains the old rouge-pellets, which have not forgotten to blush.
The comb, also of cedar, is about four inches across, and the decorated rib in
the centre is gilt.
Forty -five different objects of interest are preserved from the dozen
dressing-boxes obtained in the tombs of Preneste.
Twenty-one trays are filled with ancient jewelr\-, of which the ear-rings and
necklace of our first engravings are specimens. There are about three hundred
Master^CCCs o/ photography.
U. M.ttart. Pinx.
Romeo and jhiUet.
332 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
engraved gems, and about three hundred and fifty finger-rings, all antique, in
the Castellani cabinets.
In addition to these objects in metal or stone, the plastic triumphs of the
ceramic art occupy by themselves a whole division of Signor Castellani's mag-
nificent treasure ; three hundred and twenty-one specimens, mostly very rare,
of majolica and porcelain are included in it. Besides examples of Hispano and
Siculo-Moresque ware, showing the fine "iridescence" which the modern potter
tries in vain to imitate, the Castellani collection contains specimens of the tin-
glazed ceramic statuary made by Luca Delia Robbia, Majolicas from Caffag-
giuolo, Siena, Gubbio, Faenza, Pesaro, Urbino, Rome, and Castelli, and rare
antique porcelains of European fabriques.
Masterpieces of Photography in the Centennial Exposition. — When
Daguerre, about the year 1835, made public his first experiments in the art of
picture-making through the agency of the sun, his experiments were directed
towards landscape and architectural subjects. The slowness of the process, as
he understood it, made it unsuitable for portraiture. He was immediately
assailed, however, by hosts of correspondents, demanding of him that his method
should be extended to the representation of human beings. "Can you not
realize for us," asked one of the letters he received, "that fantastic idea of the
German romancer Hoffmann, that a lover should be able to present to his
mistress a magic mirror, in which she would see, whenever she looked, the
features of her beloved?" This is the most accurate description possible of the
early daguerreotype. But the first experiments were painful to look upon. The
time then demanded for a sitting was about four or five minutes. The wretched
victim, after taking at first "a graceful position" perforce, found himself fixed
as in a vise, without the possibility of budging; the slow minutes, which seemed
like years, wore on ; shooting pains and cramps began to invade every part of
his body ; his face soon betrayed the agony of his frame ; it contracted and
withered with agony ; a grin of despair gradually took the place of the good-
natured smile he had at first fixed upon his countenance, the perspiration
started from the pores of his forehead and streamed down his features, and b)'
insensible changes a hard fixed look of miser}' began to pierce through the
expression he had assumed at the outset, and remained as the distinguishing
334 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
trait of the likeness. Daguerre and his nephew were soon enabled to exhibit
a row of portraits achieved by the new method, but these only frightened the
originals and their friends. A series of abject individuals, each wearing the
expression of Belisarius demanding alms, were offered as the types of those
light-hearted Parisians, so gay, well-mannered and agreeable.
The immense development that has taken place in the sun-graphic or
photographic art was well indicated in the large building set up to the east-
ward of Memorial Hall, with its ample walls and partitions completely papered
with innumerable works of art, all executed by the pencil of the sun. Here
were pictures from Japan, from Africa, from Russia, from Germany, Italy and
France, from Spain and her distant dependencies, from South America, from
Great Britain ; and here the artists of the United States found themselves more
completely on a level with their compeers of the Old World than in the kindred
departments of painting and sculpture.
In this place our design is to treat photography not in its scientific so much
as in its artistic aspect. It forms a division of our review of the Fine Arts of
the Fair, and in the gossip we shall proceed to communicate on the Photog-
raphy of the Centennial Exposition, we shall touch at will upon those of its
masterpieces which have most interested us by their beauty and strangeness,
rather than upon those which interest the operator by the difficulties overcome.
As these pages are to form an Illustrated Catalogue of Masterpieces, it
would have been an anomaly to let the present portion of our criticisms go to
the public without illustrations; but the manner of embellishment presented a
difficulty; \ve were unwilling to deface our work with photograph-mounts; and
we hope our readers will acknowledge tliat the best style we could adopt was
to present illustrations of some of the most notable and extensive of the art-
photographs included in the Exposition, executed in the usual methods selected
for the embellishment of other portions of our work. They will understand,
then, that the engravings we present in this portion are simply given as like-
nesses of some of the largest and most artistic photographs displayed.
In this aspect, indeed, one of our earliest engravings may serve a double
purpose, and be referred to as illustrating the present portion of our review;
the cut of "Catherine Cornaro," on page 4, forms a satisfactory representation
of the grand photograph of the painting from a X'iennese firm of heliotypic
336 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
artists which was hung in Gallery Z of the Art Building, and was so surprising
for its sharpness even at the edges, although taken from such a gigantic original.
Our picture is a little lighter in tone than the Austrian photograph, that is all.
To gain an idea of the care and tact with which French experts now
conduct the business of copying paintings by photography, one should enter
the establishment of Bingham, of Paris, who makes a specialty of this process.
It is true that American painters often get their pictures photographed by the
nearest camera to be had, as a memorandum or souvenir of their work ; and
it is equally common to see in the shops photographs of the paintings of old
masters, whether from Venice, or Munich, or London; but these are generally
false and unequal in tone, with a despairing blackness settling down gradually
upon them towards the corners — hopeless mis-statements, vulgar things, country
copyists, bungling counterfeiters, and not fit to come within a mile of the aris-
tocratic society of the metropolitan photograph-forgery. The latter gives the
threads of the canvas, the relief of the impasto, the counterfeit of the general
tone, and you have, in all but the color, the precise aspect of the paints laid
on by the original artist. In the ateliers of Bingham, there are a multitude of
screens, some semi-transparent, some opaque ; these can be set so as to temper
the light that falls upon the painting, and make it perfecdy even over every
part. There are quantities of reflectors, which direct a ray of supernumerary
light upon those hues in the painting which would "take too black" in the pho-
tograph. As to the blues in the picture, which would take white, they may be
rubbed over with a temporary coat of gray transparent water-color. A great
many experiments are made, for the perfect negative is often stubborn, and
will not come until a long succession of its predecessors have been tested and
rejected. Finally, the good negative is not the result of a few seconds' expo-
sure of a highly sensitive surface, as is the case in portrait-work ; it is the
slower but surer impression made on a slightly sensitive surface, taking hours
to develop. During a great part of a day the picture, like an invalid in his
bandages, remains in its elaborate apparatus of screens and reflectors, most
artfully applied to produce an e.xactly equal illumination of all its parts before
the lens. After so much patience and good nursing, it is no wonder that the
result is such categorical perfection, and that we receive from Paris the exact
fac-simile, though in monochrome, of the skillful touches of Meissonier and
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PHOTOGRAPHS OF FINE ART. 337
Gerome. Nay, the business formerly committed to the engravers is carried
into their own territory, and the copying of scarce old prints photographically
is so well executed by Amand-Durand in Paris, that we are furnished with
counterfeits, only to be detected by an expert, of the rarest originals by Diirer
and Mark Antonio.
Our illustration on page 335 will give an idea of the great painting of the
"Market at Cracow," painted in that city by Hippolyte Lipinski, in 1875. We
see at the right a flock of geese for sale, then seriatim all the humors and
activities of a crowded market. Long-bearded Jews make change and chaffer;
ragged boys play with the stupid pigeons ; countrymen cry their produce, at
the top of their voices, from the elevation of their wagons ; the miller super-
intends the weighing of his sacks of grain ; the newly-married countryman
buys a cradle and marches off with it triumphantly at the side of his barefoot
bride ; the cooper and wood-carver commends his toy horse and cart to the
little girl, and his tubs to her mother. Of all this amusing tumult in M.
Lipinski's painting, not a particle of the spirit was lost by the mammoth pho-
tograph of which our cut may remind the reader.
The representation of figures on page 331 will serve to recall a couple of
It
photographs very ably taken from paintings of Makart, the same artist to
whose "Catherine Cornaro" we have just alluded. One has for subject the
farewell of Romeo and Juliet, after the former's banishment to Mantua. The
other (not illustrated) shows Faust and Marguerite — the latter insane and in
prison by his fault. These copies are interesting as betraying an effort on the
part of the painter to express more character and individuality in his figures
than usual. Juliet is a real Italian, with an intense Lombard physiognomy ;
Marguerite is a German, with a powerful Teutonic cheek-bone over which the
shrunken skin is tensely drawn by misery; in both pictures, however, the breadth
of treatment, the able contrasts of light and shade, the costume enriched wnth
some excess, show the decorative painter campaigning in the fields of expression
without leaving his baggage of luxury and sumptuousness behind him.
Finally, our snow-scene, page 333, will recall the photograph representing
Kaemmerer's painting of "Winter in Holland." RL Kaemmerer is a Hollander,
long resident in Paris, — or "long" considering liis still youthful time of life.
An Sieve of the studio of Gerome, he paints with the minute finish of that
Mirror Lake, Vo Semite ValUy.
The Terni Cascade.
340 THE INTERNATIONAL EX II I B I T 1 0 N, 1 8 7 6.
master scenes borrowed from the life of his native country. We see some
peaceful stretch of the River Scheldt, converted into a polished floor by the
frost, and etched all over with the marks of sleighs and skates. Two plainly-
noted divisions of society may be discriminated. The ladies to the left are of
the fashionable world, who get their dresses and their ideas from Paris, and
timidly put on their skates because it is the mode of the day ; they make the
most of their awkwardness, as is to be seen from their attitudes ; they would
not be taken for those market-wives who skate under loads of provisions with
all the ease of old habit. The pretty girls to the right, who have levied on
the supply of quaint old sleighs in the ancestral carriage-house, are of the rich
burghers who assume no airs of fashion : they still wear the pretty Dutch cap
of lace, under which gleams the lustre of gold ; and, provided with lusty
admirers to whom skating is second nature, and who are pushing their sleighs
over the ice, they are anticipating the joys of a spirited and well-contested
race. The prevalence of gray wintry tones in M. Kaemmerer's picture, and a
certain glossy coldness which glazes it all over with an appropriate vitreous
aspect, have made it an easy prey for the photographer, who has perfectly
succeeded in translating its peculiar quality.
Photography, in the matter of the representation of paintings, does not
always act as the rival of engraving ; it sometimes appears as its ally. In the
exhibition of art-publications by the famous house of Goupil, in the Main
Building, could be seen a large representation of Fortuny's picture, "The Mar-
riage in the Vicaria." This had the appearance of a steel engraving. It is
really a photo-gravure — or print from a plate whereon the design has a photo-
graphic basis — heightened to a certain extent by the labor of the burin. The
forms and tints are blocked out by the photo-gravure, while the engraver's
tool has been used throughout to deepen the effect and cover the plate with a
crisp texture; about half the engraver's usual labor is saved by this mixed
method ; and the publishers are able to supply the print at a much cheaper
rate than would be charged for an ordinary engraving of the size. Several
similar prints have been issued by the Messrs. Goupil. In the Photographic
Hall, also, the Goupils made an exhibit of their admirable reproductions, which
were arranged in alcove No. 25.
This Hall, of which the architect was Mr. H. J. Schwarzmann (the same
= 0^
342 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
who designed Memorial Hall), was a simple one-story building, two hundred
and forty-two by seventy-seven feet in size, situated to the east of Memorial
Hall aforesaid, and north of the Main Building. It consisted of a single room,
whose wall-space was indefinitely increased by screens projecting from the sides
and forming alcoves for exhibition purposes. In these spacious galleries hung
the photographic achievements of all the world.
As most of the exhibitors whose works we shall mention received the
award of merit, it is hardly necessary to state that fact in the cursory remarks
we shall make. That the medals were distributed without favoritism, there is a
pleasing indication : the American exhibitors were rewarded in smaller propor-
tion than those of any of the great nationalities. Thus —
The United States, with 135 exhibitors, got 27 awards;
Great Britain, " 26 " "11
Germany, " 24 " " 7 "
France, "10 " "6
Fine Art Literature of the Exposition. — The illustrated serials, the
art-editions of classical authors, the sumptuous works in which the purpose of
the description was developed by means of magnificent plates, the travels
recorded with pencil as well as with pen, formed altogether the Fine Art
Literature of the Centennial Exposition. The surprising wealth of this portion
of the display was a full reward for those who underwent the toil necessary to
seek it out, distributed as it was through the nooks and corners of the Main
Building, the pavilions set up by special publishers, the buildings erected in the
Park by different nationalities. A review of this diversified literature would
well be worth the space of a separate volume. Constrained as we are to treat
it as a mere appendix to our general study of the Fine Arts (with which topic,
however, it is so closely and appropriately allied), we must portray it simply in
outline ; happy indeed if so cursory a treatment shall recall to the reader some
fine work which only slightly imprinted itself on the memory in hurrying- by,
or bring to notice an unknown typographical masterpiece.
Shakspeare, as the greatest genius arisen since the discovery of prindng,
first claims our attention. Innumerable are the illustrated Shakspeares. Each
of the civilized nations has found him the inspiration of its art. Of the various
■JinfBipiElfllBISIfiliq^^^
r
liiisL,
liiEniiinraiinBliiiainimiiiiiitiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHii:
344 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
countries that have distinguished themselves by fine pictorial editions of his
dramas, England, as is meet, bears the palm with the superb Boydell Shaks-
peare, embellished by the labors of the best painters and engravers, and, all
things considered, the finest expression in this line of works produced by the
epoch that gave birth to West, Fuseli and Reynolds. France, it is well known,
is preparing a very elaborate pictorial Shakspeare, at the hands of the mar-
velously-endowed Gustave Dore ; but Germany, as the country which, after his
native land, most adequately appreciates the Stratford magician, is to be looked
to among his most prompt and attentive interpreters in this sort of publication.
The favorite outline illustrations of Moritz Retzsch, of Dresden, mannered and
inadequate as they are, have introduced into even English and American homes,
by the striking and theatral expressiveness of their drama, an interest in
Shakspeare often unknown before their acquaintance was made. We select a
specimen of a more elaborate series of illustrations.
This series is that which embellishes the fine translation of Shakspeare's
works published by Brockhaus, of Leipsic. The translators are the most
learned and skilllul in Germany, such as Schlegel, Bodenstedt, and Delius,
More than one edition is published by the house, whether unembellished, or
made attractive with wood-cuts or steel-plates, according to the purse of the
purchaser to be tempted. From the richest form in which Brockhaus issues his
standard version of Shakspeare, we select an illustration, on steel by W. Schmidt,
after the picture of A. Spiers. It represents the scene between Angelo and
Isabella, Mcasiox /o>- Meas7ire, Act II, Scene 4: —
Angelo. I'lainly conceive, I love you.
Jstthelh. My brother did love Juliet; and you tell me
That he shall die For it.
Angelo. He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.
The o^ende "votarist of St. Clare," shocked at the turn the argument is
taking as she pleads with the Lord Deputy to have her brother taken out of
prison, is repelling his offer with a decided gesture of her white hand. The
engraving is finely wrought and well conceived (notwithstanding the ill-advised
resemblance between the faces of Isabella and the ruler of Vienna), and the
whole edition a credit to Germany's representation at Philadelphia.
From illustrated poetry we turn to illustrated traveling. American readers
.,NN ^Kf^^-iKf^t-n
I J. 'I, , '
p-'
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
345
have often had occasion to be gratified with the fine sketches of their own
native scenery given in the " Tour du Monde" an important serial publication
346 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
of the Paris house of Hachette & Co. This work, which has been appearing
for years, as a sort of pictorial magazine of travel, has been the matrix from
which have sprung various notable holiday-books, such as Marcoy's South
American rambles, Wey's "Rome," etc.; the Christmas-keepsake is simply a
selection from the chapters of the Toui; bound together. The most adventu-
rous modern travelers and most vivacious writers, whether French or foreign,
have contributed to the series, — now Hepworth Dixon, with his impressions on
Russia, now I. I. Hayes, with his notes of polar voyages. The illustrations have
levied upon the very best artistic talent of the day; now it is Gustave Dore
sketching in Spain, now Valerio with his portfolios filled in the Gipsy camps
of Wallachia, now Henri Regnault penciling his way through the streets and
lanes of Rome. Very beautiful studies of travel in the United States have
from time to time been prepared, such as the embellishments to a paper on
the relics of Spanish setdements in Florida, and the picture of "Mirror Lake,
Yo Semite Valley," engraved from a photograph to illustrate some passages of
California travel.
We extract the "Mirror Lake," and grace w^ith it our 338th page.
The French, however, have latterly been hard pressed by the rivalry of
the Germans in the preparation of sumptuous books of travel. Among the
splendidly-pictured works of this sort exhibited in the German section, we can
hardly pass so noble a volume as the "Italy" exhibited by J. Englehorn, of
Stuttgart. This fine repertory of artistic views yields us three pictures with
which to adorn our publication. We first extract (page 339) the "Cascade of
Terni." Two affluents of the Tiber meet to form the volume of water which
here pours down the flanks of the Abruzzi. The traveler takes Terni on his
w^ay from Florence to Rome ; after reaching Papigno, the road immediately
ascends the steep hill above the Falls, so that tourists \vho wish to visit them
eti route quit the carriage at Papigno, and rejoin it again at the summit. It is
glorious to see, in a country whose civilization is so old as Italy's, a piece of
uncontaminated nature like Terni, rugged as in the days before the race of
Romulus passed into Etruria. Our next selection shows "The Campo Santo
at Pisa" (page 341). Ever)^ reader knows the vast importance of the relics of
Pisa to art. The architecture, of the neighboring Carrara marble, is bright and
elegant compared with that of Pisa's old rival, Florence. The cemetery, which
//»-:
itemational Exi)iliitioul8''6 .
THE IFITRST STEFo
&EBB1T, & BAIUUE
Aivrds^c-n En^*
^^ic jitC^t^ntt-i.
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
347
is here exhibited, is surrounded by dehcate arcades whose twisted columns are
slender like ropes of silver ; the earth, brought from Holy Land, is a sheet of
lovely turf, studded with massive cypresses ; and the gallery surrounding the
old graves is a repository of some of the most interesting works of art in
From "Les Protneitades dc Parii."
'^^■^r^^^f:^.
Riviere de Ckarentoii .
Italy. Funereal monuments, like those depicted in the cut, completely surround
It. Some are of showy Italian work ; some are rare mediaeval relics ; and now
and then an old Roman sarcophagus or capital — kept there because a beauty-
loving race has chosen to exhibit its pretty findings in the most public place.
348 THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, i8j 6.
intrudes among the Christian dead. One such rehc is the sarcophagus brought
from Greece in the eleventh century; it is carved witli fine bas-reliefs of Hip-
polytus, going to the chase, and rejecting Phaedra ; this Grecian coffin, utilized
as the tomb of Matilda of Tuscany, taught Nicolo Pisano the secret of art in
1260, and created the Renaissance. On the walls of the same Campo Santo
are preserved the famous frescoes, culminating in the sublime "Triumph of
Death" of Orcagna ; works noble in purpose, though fettered in expression,
for painting was not so quick to find out the Greek carvings as sculpture was,
and Orcagna, working in the century after Nicolo, is still rigid and mediaeval
when the sculptor is quite Hellenized and emancipated. Finally, we show
(page 343), as our last extract from Englehorn's "Italy," a view collaterally
belonging to the route of the Italian voyager, a panorama of Trieste. Trieste,
the great port of Austria, is but seventy miles from Venice, and is Italian in
appearance. All the engravings in this work are literal and trustworthy, while
they almost entirely avoid hardness, that besetting vice of German wood-cuts.
The above is a fair example of a work for the edification of tourists in a
foreign land. To show, however, the pleasures and surprises that may be yielded
to the explorer of a single city and its environs, we select the "Promenades
de Paris," exhibited at Philadelphia by its publisher, J. Rothschild, of Paris. It
is in two fine folio volumes; the first, of nearly four hundred pages, contains
the text and wood-cuts ; the second, a beautiful album, encloses the steel
engravings and chromo-lithographs. Here are pictures of the twenty small
Squares of Paris, such as the Chatelet, the Tour St. Jaques, and the Place
Royale ; and the Woods and Parks, such as the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois
de Vincennes, the Garden of the Luxembourg, Champs-Elysees, and Trocadero.
We select from among the wood-cuts two views, illustrating that improvement
of Paris under Prefect Haussmann which was one of the pacific glories — there
were few belligerent ones — of the Second Empire. On page 345 we present a
cut from the Pro77taiades, exhibiting the new fountain on the Avenue de I'Ob-
servatoire, only completed towards the close of Louis Napoleon's reign. The
group of sculpture, by the late brilliant artist Carpeaux, represents Europe,
Asia, Africa and America sustaining the sphere ; each geographical division
presented in a figure of great energy. Above their heads is seen the dome
of the Observatory, so renownedly connected with the labors of the closing
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
349
years of Leverrier. This elaborate fountain now makes the southern part of
Paris vie with the more early favored portions in elegance and attractiveness.
A smaller cut from the same work, which we show on page 347, of the Riviere
or rivulet of Charenton, gives to the tired eyes of dusty citizens a refreshing
piece of country wildness. The work published by M. Rothschild illustrates the
enormous effect which a few years of intelligent city administration can do in
opening the lungs of a great metropolis. The determination to ventilate Paris
led to a mighty expense of power and money, and was a new idea within the
Frotn " Thorwaldsen, sa Vie et son (Euvre.'
Venus and Mercury.
present half-century. Towards the close of Louis XVIII's reign, the crowding
of the capital began to show itself in a manner hurtful to comfort and health.
The Champs-Elysees had been invaded with buildings ; and favorite gardens,
such as those of Tivoli, Beaujon and Marbceuf had been suppressed. The
constant demand for central building-sites, weakly or avariciously yielded by the
city in response to perpetual applications, had resulted in encumbering the heart
of the metropolis, and rendering the whole capital unhealthy. The transforma-
tion of Paris, the creation of Squares, the ruthless opening of new boulevards,
will cause a long posterity to thank the twenty pacific years of the now dead
and gone Empire. The capital which, first in Europe, had the courage to
350 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1S76.
devour and digest its proud edifices and transform them into groves, remains
as a healthful example, from which not France alone, but Europe and the
civilized world will profit. The author of the text in the Promenades de Paris
is the engineer A. Alphand.
Strictly an art-work is the illustrated life of Thorwaldsen, by Eugene Plon,
exhibited in the collection of E. Plon & Co., printers and publishers of Paris.
It is a fine homage from France to Denmark, and America also can come in
for a share of the tribute through the translation published by Roberts. The
two cuts we give, however (page 349), do not appear in the Boston edition.
That radiant art-critic, Theophile Gautier, remarks of this work and its embel-
lishments: "The young author has followed up his sources, has traversed
Denmark, looking up the traces of his hero, consulting the reminiscences of
those who knew him, and begging for those particulars of home and family
which throw a light on a physiognomy kept too far off too statuesque ; for we
are apt to figure Thorwaldsen as God Thor himself striking with his hammer
a block of marble similar to a lump of polar ice." M. Eugene Plon has com-
posed a full catalogue of the works of the illustrious Danish sculptor, and has
added to his text, besides the two beautiful engravings of Veiius and Mercury,
a large number of charming wood-cuts, of the purest design, representing single
figures, groups, reliefs, and fragments of the master's compositions. We need
hardly add our approval of a work which has passed the critical muster of
such a judge. Of the two statues indicated, the "Venus" was executed in
Rome; Thorwaldsen employed for it more than thirty models. Casting aside
a first essay made in 1805, the sculptor began about 1S12 to labor assiduously
on this figure, which after more than three years of steady labor he finisheil
in 1816, at the age of forty-six. The first three copies were made for Lord
Lucan, the Duchess of Devonshire, and Mr. Labouchere. The duchess's pur-
chase was broken in unloading the vessel carrying it, and the fracture in the
copy, now at Chatsworth, concealed by a gold bracelet. That of Lord Lucan
was shipwrecked, and then, in unloading, a rope broke, and the marble dropped
into a cargo of wheat, Ceres thus saving Venus. The "Mercury" belongs to
about the same period. Walking one day in the Corso, the artist saw, seated
at the curb-stone, a porter, whose attitude was at once so uncommon and so
natural that he was immediately impressed ; as usual, he made a rapid .sketch
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
351
frij»t ' I'oyage aiilour dn Moitdc'
Scc7?c i?t Baiavia
of the figure in his note-book, and this Roman boor became the Greek Mercur\-,
finisiied in 1819. Several copies exist of this beautiful, severe conception: one
352 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
in Lord Ashburton's collection, one in Count Potocki's, and one purchased by
the Spanish government. Mercur3^ having just put Argus to sleep by playing
on the syrinx, gently moves the instrument from his lips and draws his sword
to decapitate the spy ; the god is seated, but on the point of rising. Artists
examine with more than common interest the slight but accurate drawings that
illustrate Plon's Thorvvaldsen ; they are the work of F. Gaillard, an artist who
has lately carried to unprecedented degrees the excess of manipulation in aqua-
fortis, and who is now known as the incomparable etcher of Antonello's portrait
of the Condottiere, of Van Eyck's " Man holding a Carnation-Flower," and of
Michael Angelo's "Twilight."
Published by Henri Plon, same address in the rue Garanciere as the last,
is the illustrated edition of the Count de Beauvoir's "Voyage autour du Monde,"
one of the handsomest novelties exhibited at Philadelphia. From among the
embellishments we select the torrid-looking picture presented by an "Arroyo"
in Bangkok (page 351). The Count de Beauvoir is a young diplomate who
about eight years ago circumnavigated the globe on a voyage of exploration,
acting as companion to the Duke de Penthi^vre, a son of the Prince de Join-
ville. The record of his travels includes the United States, San Francisco,
Yeddo, Pekin, Canton, Siam, Java, and Australia. It is delightful reading; he
everywhere shows the tact of a man of the world, and the cheerfulness of a
philosopher to which the strongest experiences are welcome. Francisque de
Sarcey, speaking of his work, exclaims, "Come, there are still youthful spirits
left in France ! M. de Beauvoir is a pleasant companion to know. He does
the honors of his extreme youthfulness so gracefully, he flashes out with such
genuine and contagious mirthfulness !" He gives the most piquant details of
the harems where the sultanas of Java are secluded, and of the well-regulated
life of the seventy-three princes of Siam, sons of King Mongkut: eats rats
and dogs, and pities the seven hundred widows of the second Siamese king,
huddled around the golden bowl which preserves for them the person of their
defunct lord. The book of M. de Beauvoir has been translated without the
illustrations, and the tj'pography is superior in the French original.
In presenting, with all modesty, a specimen engraving from M. Belloy's
" ChristopJier Cobimbus" the proprietors of the Illustrated Catalogue are forced
to speak for a moment of themselves. They can but salute their own image,
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
353
From "Christopiu Colontb et la Dccoitvertc du Nou-veatt Monde.'''
The Progress through Ba?-celo?ia.
354 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
as it were, in tlie glass which the Exposition furnished of their hitherto fortu-
nate enterprises, and in the reflection which this Catalogue transmits of them
and their illustrious compeers in art publication. Among the noble works made
rich by art labors, not the least beautiful, not the least appropriate to the subject
of the Centennial, was surely this monumental tribute to Columbus, ably trans-
lated by Mr. R. S. Hunter, and enriched by the etchings and designs of the
famous Leopold Flameng. On page 353 we print one of Flameng's wood-cuts,
representing the procession in Barcelona in honor of the discovery of our dear
native country. It is a sumptuous festa, with its train of stout Spanish dis-
coverers in holiday attire, its waving branches of American palm and maize, its
tributary troops of naked savages, and the Spanish banners dangling from the
eaves of the famous Rambla. We are tempted to quote the sparkling passage
referring to this festival, but forbear in time, partly from a careful sense of
propriety, partly from a not unnatural desire to send the reader to the volume
itself The medal and diploma awarded to the house for the art publications
shown at the Centennial Exposition were for the following, selected by them
from among their recently issued books: "The Masterpieces of Eui'Opean Art,"
by Philip T. Sandhurst and James Stothert, with one hundred and two steel
plates and nearly two hundred wood engravings; "The Art Treastires of
Etigland^' by J. Vernon Whitaker, with sixteen portraits and one hundred and
two steel enoravines ; and "Illustrated Catalogue: the Masterpieces of the
United St.vtes International Exhibition of 1876."
Our steel engraving of "The First Step," and our wood-cut on page 355
of "The Attack," are samples of the embellishments of a very sumptuous
serial publication, the "Musee dcs Deux Moitdes" issued and still issuing from
the office of M. Bachelin-Deflorenne, Paris; in each kind of illustration we are
willing to show the excellence of this work, for which are engaged both the
best designers on wood and the best etchers, and whose list of American sub-
scribers we would willingly increase if we could. "The First Step," etched by
Masson, represents Bonnat's picture, full of the most serious excellences, of a
contadina teaching her little boy to walk : we need scarcely insist on the
unusual merit of the nude figure, which in a telling truthfulness of pose and
solidity of modeling is more perfect and real than the finest majolica of Delia
Robbia's. Bonnat's supremacy in flesh painting is now uncontested. The wood-
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
355
eno-raving on page 355 is after a painting of De Neuville's, himself an
experienced designer on the boxwood, but letting himself be copied in this
instance by his friend Edmond Yon. It represents an episode in the Franco-
356 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
Prussian war : we see the small public squares of a village ; the French soldiers,
meaning to occupy and fortify the place, and engaged in carrying faggots for
chevaux de frise, are surprised by a murderous fire from every window that
looks upon the place, opened by the Germans, who have already taken pos-
session of the town and concealed themselves in the houses. M. de Neuville,
known of old as a brilliant designer, is becoming eminent in the more compli-
cated line of oil-painting, in which specialty his subjects inspired by the late
war hold a conspicuous place.
The noble steel-plate of " Christ on the Waters" is a representative illus-
tration from what probably ought to be called, after all the worthy publications
to which we have alluded, the finest art-book of our generation. It is published
by Hachette, from whose display at Philadelphia we have already selected the
Yo Semite picture taken from the Tour du Monde. But the "Bida Bible" is
a work of monumental importance, projected and destined to be the standard
and glory of the house. This publication gave special employment to many
industries. The types used were cut new by Viel-Cazal, from designs by
Rossigneux ; the printing, which frequently combines the impression of the
steel-plate on the same page with the impression of the type, was done under
the supervision of Hedouin, the etcher, for the engravings, and of the great
printer Claje for the typography. The vellum paper, for the choicest editions,
was made at two different French factories ; the Holland paper, for the rest,
by the Dutch manufacturer Breet ; the ink was specially made by Lorilleux.
This carefully distributed responsibility has resulted in one of the masterpieces
of printing of all time. The printed page is a picture, and the etchings, we
were going to say, are paintings. A talented Hebrew, M. Bida, well known
for his travels and studies in the Holy Land, supplied all the illustrations,
which were etched for the work by the most prominent artists in aqua-fortis,
such as Leopold Flameng, Celestin Nanteuil, Hedouin, Chaplin, Gaucherel,
Bodmer, Veyrassat, and Henriette Brown. The Gospels, or "Evangels," may
be bought separately. The translation of the latter is the fine one of the
great Bossuet. Very beautiful, in religious sentiment, in artistic sentiment, in
close oriental sentiment, in suggestion of color and painting quality, is the
etching we select of "Christ on the Waters." In addition to the etchings, and
in function half-way between printers' ornaments and illustrations, are the
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A Garden Party in the Fifteenth Century.
3S8 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
numerous tail-pieces, initial letters and titles : these are no common electro-
types, such as decorate ordinary works, but are exquisite steel engravings, from
new designs by Rossigneux, forming the most graceful imaginable combinations
of palm-branches and willow-leaves with carved scroll-work and shields. The
Bible, in this most poetic presentment of M. Hachette's, is seen for the first
time illustrated in a vein of perfect unity and harmony, and with its distinctive
coloring as an Oriental revelation adequately recognized.
Nothing can so fitly come after the sacred pre-eminence of such a Picto-
rial Bible, as the noblest work of our age in general Art-Literature. This is
U Art, celebrated already as the most expensive periodical anywhere published,
and having a merit more than equal to its cost. France possessed, before the
rise of this splendid serial work, an admirable art-journal, La Gazette des Beazix-
A?'ts, devoted to criticisms on picture-exhibidons and the elucidation of dark
passages in art-history ; the Gazette had such a brilliant reputation that there
was something audacious in the announcement, some three years ago, of a new
critical or^an intended to follow almost the same course. When L' Art
appeared, however, it was seen to fill a need not provided for by the journal
already in the field. The unusual size especially — that of a full folio — gives
opportunity for ample and adequate copies of pictures, and never before has
the enterprise of preparing large copper-plate reproducdons of works freshly
exhibited in the Paris Salon or the London Royal Academy been carried
so far.
L' Art has also represented, among its splendid etchings, fine works by
the old masters, among which about a dozen belonging to the valuable American
gallery of the late William T. Blodgett have formed master-attractions. The
serial in question is the first French journal which has ever given prominence
to English work ; an English editor has been appointed, and regular reports,
with pictures, are rendered of the London exhibitions. U Art appears weekly,
but American subscribers, not liking to have their copies rolled, or defaced in
the mail, usually wait until the numbers have been collected into quarterly
volumes, for which reduced terms can be obtained from the American agent,
Mr. Bouton.
The criticaster's diatribes against "newsy illustrations" ought to be silenced
by so powerful a work, so broad in its minuteness, so silvery and pure in its
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
359
embellishments, so quietly skillful in its composition. L' Art was the only work
exhibited in Philadelphia by its publisher, A. Ballue,
From Elauc's "Hi^toire dcs Peintres,'
The Wheat-Field.
To show that exquisite French typography, and a system of illustrations
quite up to the demands of the time, issue from the provinces as well as from
Paris, we give a specimen picture from Arthur Mangin's beautiful work on
36o THE INTERNATIONAL EX H I B I TI 0 N, 1 8 7 6.
■ » . . -
''Les Jardins" published by Alfred Mame & Son, in what Balzac calls the
"laughing, slobbering, amorous, cool, flowery and perfumed city of Tours." The
work of M. Mangin treats of the history of gardening, in different nations,
from the hanging gardens of Semiramis down to the present time, and gives
descriptions and views of modern English gardens, Italian gardens, and gardens
in the style of Le Notre. Our cut, "A Garden Party in the Fifteenth Century,"
(page 357) represents a Flemish enclosed green-house, where the summer light
falls through the close steamy atmosphere of the place upon plumes and tiaras,
buff-coats and halberds, lords and ladies, in the cumbrous pomp of Albert
Diirer's groups.
The publishing house now managed by H. Loones, in the rue de Tournon,
Paris, represents a very old establishment of which he is the successor.
Antoine-Auguste Renouard, a linguist and bibliophilist, founded the business
in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The present representative pub-
lishes, in large majority, books dedicated to the line arts. Among others, the
safe and methodical works of Charles Blanc will long have a peculiar value
for their careful statement of facts and just criticism. It is not alone for the
excellence of the engravings with which it is replete, but for the good judg-
ment of the opinions expressed, that we cite M. Blanc's "Histoire des Peintres."
A sounder work of criticism it would be hard to find. It is in fourteen volumes,
with three thousand one hundred and eiehtv enfrravinofs, of which we borrow
four. Charles Blanc is a brother of Louis Blanc, the political theorist and
historian. Our specimen pictures are respectively chosen from the English
school, the Dutch school, the Italian school, and the French school. The first
represents "The Wheat-Field" (page 359), one of Constable's fine succulent-
looking landscapes; the next (page 361), one of Roberts' celebrated church
interiors; the next (page 363), the magnificent "Entombment" by Titian, of
which the original is in the Louvre; the last (page 365), "The Pointers," by
the French animalist, Fran9ois Desportes. In the English scene w^e detect the
freedom, the motion, the bursting sense of life which, combined with masterly
technical skill in relief and atmosphere, made Constable the true father of
modern landscape. The trees seem pushing up from the ground with the vigor
of the tide of life which animates them. First of landscape painters, Constable
put sap into his trees. The incidents are charming — the shepherd-boy in shirt-
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
361
Frcnt Blanc's "Hish'irc :i£S Piintres."
Church Interior.
sleeves, flat on his stomach, and dipping his snub nose into the stream as he
drinks ; his dog, astutely managing the flock in his stead, yet giving a cursor)'
sniff" in the direction of his young master, wondering a little what he would
362 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
be at; above the dog, so that your attention is guided to him, the farmer,
scythe on shoulder, half buried in the tall velvety wheat, and just entered
within the gate-posts, whose broken door he cannot find time to mend in this
ripe season of harvest; above the farmer, the church. A pleasant combination
of probable objects, grandly framed in the elastic and rocking trees. The
church interior is as dry as the other is "juicy." All is spic-and-span ; the
ragged raptures of the "picturesque" have never lacerated this patient, plodding
spirit. He loves order, dusdessness, the gradual shading of daylight up the
lono- shafts of gray pillars; his church is in excellent repair, and it is enlivened
with well-arranged groups of orderly worshippers. In the "Entombment,"
Titian seems to unite the merits of the whole Italian body of painters. You
do not miss the grace of Raphael, you do not feel the want of the science of
Michael Angelo, in this noble work, which seems to gather all the learning of
the more classical schools together with that splendor of color and happy loose-
ness of movement of which only Venice got the secret. These three grandiose
bearers, relieved against the sunset like Titans burying a god, and watched by
female faces of terrible agony, contain all that is majestic in character, move-
ment and religious constancy. Especially fine is the gesture of St. John's head
upon his shoulders, giving vent to a world of despair in one broad brusque
motion, and shaking out the dark wildness of the hair against the gathering
twilight. The dog-picture by Desportes is a good conscientious representation
of the breed of Louis XIV's hunting-dogs. The wind must be very strong
from the right-hand side of the scene to enable them to get so near the partridges.
It was remarked that in the galleries of Paintings and Sculpture the French
made a less imposing exhibit than was expected, and the English a finer one.
In the kindred department of Art publications the balance was the other way,
and we consider it the more imperative to take up this subject of Fine Art
literature on that account, while the opportunity to render some justice to the
greatness of the artistic element in France is embraced by us with the more
pleasure since it is a necessity for the restoring of a just equilibrium. There
was, for instance, in the central quarter of the Main Building, an enclosure
dedicated to the exhibit of the "Cercle de la Librairie" of Paris. We have
already drawn upon some of the publishers represented in this association, but
we ought to mention a few more.
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
363
Didier & Co. exhibited a specimen of the "Tresor de Ntunismatique," a most
elaborate work illustrated with tac-similes of ancient coins, represented with
perfect precision by the Collas process. Firmin Didot showed the splendid
volumes of Paul Lacroix on the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Racinet's "Poly-
364 THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1870.
chrome Ornainent" Wallon's "Jeanne D' Arc" etc. The house of Michel Levy
(now Calmann Levy) exposed Renan's Journey in Phoenicia, with plates, and the
illustrated French novelists. Mame & Son, of Tours (besides Les Jardins,
which we have mentioned), sent Dore's Bible and Grandville s La Fontaine.
Morel & Co. sent a long shelf of expensive pictorial works, such as Le Due's
Architecture, a Dictionary of Fiimiiure, L' Art Poitr Tons, De Boutowski's
Russian Ornament, Bourgoin's Arab Art, and others. Plon & Co. exposed
(besides the already cited Voyage autour dii Monde and Thoi'umldseii) Yriarte's
Goya and Pat7'icie7i de Venise, and BertalVs humorous sketches.
In the English department we must not omit the Art your'nal, now forming
a long series of bound volumes; the case containing the series of Punch: the
Illustrated London. N'ews, and the attractive exhibit made by the GrapJiic.
Germany displayed some pictorial works — we have already mentioned
two — distinguished . frequently by painstaking excellence, but not so often by
felicity and lightness of touch. In the separate edifice erected by Spain we
noticed, among a ricii representation of the Castilian press in general, precious
examples of the etchings of Goya, gatiiered in at least three of those often
sought, seldom found volumes of his.
America showed plenty of fine cdiuons, and plenty of illustrated editions,
but not very many of such a stricdy artistic character as would fall within the
line we have mentally traced for this department. Appleton's Picturesque
America should be mentioned as a highly creditable performance, lavishly embel-
lished with cuts of high quality. Scribner's serial publications have developed
a new standard of excellence in wood engraving. Those of Harper & Brother
contain illustrations, some of which are original and very good. A Centicry
After, published by Allen, Lane & Scott, contained a series of cuts rivaling
those of Picturesque America, with text by Richard Henr}- Stoddard and Edward
Strahan. We can scarcely include in our category the often clever illustrated
guide-books to the principal American cities, but we must in justice cite, as
coming the nearest to similar European weeklies in the vigor of its illustrations,
Leslie's NciL^spapcr, many of whose cuts are original.
Our sketchy remarks on the Photography and Fine Art Literature ended,
we devote a few words to three more steel plates. '"The Scheldt, Texel
THE FINE ART LITERATURE.
365
Island," is from a fine painting by the late Charles Stanfield, which was lent by
the Royal Academy, and hung near Frith's "Marriage of the Prince of Wales."
a.
It shows that mastery of composition which Stanfield learned from his early
trade as theatrical decorator and that neatness, nattiness and over-cleanliness
of which Ruskin complains in Stanfield's pictures. It certainly gives that
366
THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876.
delicious motion of water dancing in a light wind which nobody ever caught
like Stanfield. "Oxen Plowing" is an etching by Peter Moran, of Philadelphia,
from Rosa Bonheur's great picture in the Luxembourg entided "Labourage
Nivernais." Mr. Moran exhibited in Gallery 22, Annex, five frames of animal
subjects in aqua-fortis, of which this was one. All of Mile. Bonheur's thoroughly
trained draughts-womanship . is shown in Mr. Moran's copy, while her imperfect
color and qualite are discreetly vailed. When the history of American Etching,
now an infant, comes to be written, Mr. Moran's name will be famous as that
of one of the progenitors. "Roger and Angelica," by Theobald Chartran, a
young pupil of Cabanel, is suitable for a plafond, or ceiling decoration. The
young Parisian has sent to America, in this graceful and elegant theme from
Tasso's Jerusalem, an exquisite tribute from French art to Italian literature.
What we would have had to say about the display in Memorial Hall, and
the relations of Fine Art to Industrial Art and Art Applied, have been so
admirably anticipated in the monograph on "Industrial Art," that we can only
refer our readers to the 508th and following pages of that well-digested treatise.
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